New Delhi
The Nanavati Commission report on the 2002 Gujarat riots gives a clean chit to the state government then led by Narendra Modi, who has been Prime Minister of India since 2014. Action should be taken against the police who were ineffective in controlling mobs and did not show the “competence necessary” to do so, says the report tabled in the Gujarat assembly on Wednesday, five years after it was submitted to the state government.
“There is no evidence to show that these attacks were either inspired or instigated or abated by any minister of the state,” the commission said in its report, which runs into over 1,500 pages in nine volumes. It said the police at some places were ineffective in controlling the mob because of their inadequate numbers or because they were not properly armed.
Retired Justices GT Nanavati and Akshay Mehta had in 2014 submitted their final report on the 2002 riots in which over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed.
PM Modi, as Chief Minister, had tasked the panel with investigating the riots that broke out in the aftermath of the February 27 killing of 59 Hindus in a train burning in Godhra town, around 150 km from state capital Gandhinagar.
The report recommends an inquiry and action against police officers accused of “not showing necessary competence and eagerness” to check the three-day violence that engulfed the state.
“Police at some places were ineffective in controlling the mob,” the report said.
The first part of the report, submitted in the year 2008, covered the Godhra train burning. It concluded that the burning of two coaches of Sabarmati Express, in which Hindu karsevaks or volunteers were travelling, was a “planned conspiracy”.
