Who would have imagined that a small alleged scuffle on Godhra platform in the evening of 27th February nine years ago would stain the secular India by a lot of bloodshed? As mentioned by Wikipedia.com, the unprecedented repercussions of the sordid event of burning 58 passengers, mostly Hindu pilgrims, led to “the retaliatory massacres against Muslims on a large scale, in which 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. 223 more people were reported missing. 523 places of worship were damaged: 298 dargahs, 205 mosques, 17 temples, and 3 churches. Muslim-owned businesses suffered the bulk of the damage. 61,000 Muslims and 10,000 Hindus fled their homes. Preventive arrests of 17,947 Hindus and 3,616 Muslims were made. In total 27,901 Hindus and 7,651 Muslims were arrested. Nearly 10,000 rounds of bullets were fired by the police, killing 93 Muslims and 77 Hindus”. The local Muslims have been maintaining that the scuffle, the burning of S-6 compartment and the entailing riots were the part of one big conspiracy. Their viewpoint got strength from the report of the Ahmedabad-based Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), which expressed that “it is impossible that inflammable liquid could have been poured from outside into the train compartment”. One of the reasons it gave was that the height of the window of the coach was around 7 feet from the ground at the place and in the position it was not possible to throw any inflammable fluid inside from outside the coach from any bucket because by doing this, most of the fluid was getting thrown outside. According to the report, inflammable liquid was already present in the train compartment and fire started from inside. New Delhi: Union Law Minister M Veerappa Moily has finally accepted the fact that there is inability on the part of Court or the Constitution to safeguard minority rights at times. His statement comes a week after former Chief Justice of India A. M. Ahmadi accepted that the Supreme Court could have prevented the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Moily said, “At times Courts or the Constitution may become helpless to go to the “rescue of the minority when there is a tyranny of the majority.” Moily said this while addressing a gathering at a panel discussion on Indian Constitution and the US Bill of Rights, a report in the Indian Express said. Elaborating further on his idea about safeguarding minority rights in India and a comparison with the US, Moily said that US President Eisenhower had sent federal police to take action and put an African-American student back on the bus, when that student was reportedly thrown out. But if an Indian Prime Minister or the President does the same kind of thing in case of any discrimination, then “a stricture may come from the Supreme Court,” he further added. the burning of a train in the village of Godhra, in India's Gujarat state, in 2002 killed 59 Hindu pilgrims. Rightist Hindu politicians blamed Muslims for the fire and it led to Indian's worst religious violence in years, killing about 2,000 people, mostly Muslims After a trial lasting almost nine years, 59 people were found guilty. Al Jazeera's Prerna Suri reports from Ghodra. |
The long awaited Godhra verdict has been pronounced today by a special court of Justice PR Patel in Ahmadabad. It accepted the prosecution’s conspiracy theory; however, the alleged ‘mastermind’ in the case Moulvi Umarji was acquitted by the court along with two thirds of the overall 94 accused ones.
In the so-called Godhra train burning case, 31 people have been convicted under Section 302 and 120 B of the Indian Penal Code whereas 63 co-accused were acquitted including the main accused, Maulvi Umarji. Quantum of sentence will be announced on February 25 and it is anticipated that many of those who face sentence by the court would be let free on the ground that they had already completed equal or longer period in jail during the prosecution.
The BJP spokesperson and Supreme Court lawyer Ravishankar Prasad has welcomed the judgment and desired that those guilty should be taken to task for the unfortunate act. On the riots that entailed after the Godhra incident he answered to media persons that both the Gohdra incident and the riots that entailed were unfortunate and the BJP have never condoned the post Godhra reactions in the state. He called the Banerjee report on the S-6 coach as “collusive”.
Hari Prashad, the Congress leader of Gujarat, commented that the verdict is acceptable but innocent should not be punished. He said, “Our stand is vindicated by the fact that a large number of alleged persons have been acquitted by the court.” He apprehended that in a charged communal atmosphere of the state it is possible that the administration would be biased against a certain community.
Who would have imagined that a small alleged scuffle on Godhra platform in the evening of 27th February nine years ago would stain the secular India by a lot of bloodshed? As mentioned by Wikipedia.com, the unprecedented repercussions of the sordid event of burning 58 passengers, mostly Hindu pilgrims, led to “the retaliatory massacres against Muslims on a large scale, in which 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. 223 more people were reported missing. 523 places of worship were damaged: 298 dargahs, 205 mosques, 17 temples, and 3 churches. Muslim-owned businesses suffered the bulk of the damage. 61,000 Muslims and 10,000 Hindus fled their homes. Preventive arrests of 17,947 Hindus and 3,616 Muslims were made. In total 27,901 Hindus and 7,651 Muslims were arrested. Nearly 10,000 rounds of bullets were fired by the police, killing 93 Muslims and 77 Hindus”.
The local Muslims have been maintaining that the scuffle, the burning of S-6 compartment and the entailing riots were the part of one big conspiracy. Their viewpoint got strength from the report of the Ahmedabad-based Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), which expressed that “it is impossible that inflammable liquid could have been poured from outside into the train compartment”. One of the reasons it gave was that the height of the window of the coach was around 7 feet from the ground at the place and in the position it was not possible to throw any inflammable fluid inside from outside the coach from any bucket because by doing this, most of the fluid was getting thrown outside. According to the report, inflammable liquid was already present in the train compartment and fire started from inside.
Initial police investigations have also indicated that it could have been a spontaneous riot situation, but the Special Investigation Team (SIT) later said the act was pre-planned. There were allegations that investigations were biased both in the Godhra case and in the Gujarat riots cases, and the Supreme Court finally ordered another SIT investigation in 2008, this time under RK Raghavan. On Godhra, this SIT too endorsed the findings of the earlier SIT, which ultimately led to the acceptance of the conspiracy theory by the court.
A commission set up by the Railways ministry reported in 2005 that the fire was almost certainly an accident, however the Gujarat High Court ruled formation of this enquiry commission by Railways as "illegal" and "unconstitutional". As of now all its probe results stand invalid. Another judicial committee investigating charges under POTA opined in 2005 that the actions of the Muslim mob were most likely spontaneous and not pre-planned. However, a commission set up by the Gujarat government upheld in 2008 the original SIT claims that it was a conspiracy. Now, the court agreed that the incident was a preplanned conspiracy.
The main accused Maulvi Umarji, however, has been acquitted due to lack of evidence, who according to the SIT had ordered four lieutenants to mobilize a mob and fuel to target and burn the S-6 coach carrying Kar Sevaks. The SIT had identified and arrested the 31 people convicted by Justice Patel as a core team that planned the attack. The SIT's conspiracy theory claimed that these 31 people held meetings, planned to target the train when it reached Godhra station and that they burnt the coach.
Trial in the case began in June 2009 with the framing of the charges against the accused, who have been in Sabarmati jail since 2002. All the accused in the case have been charged with criminal conspiracy and murder.
After completion of the hearing last September, the verdict could not be given as there was a Supreme Court stay on it. This stay was lifted on October 26, 2010.
In the so-called Godhra train burning case, 31 people have been convicted under Section 302 and 120 B of the Indian Penal Code whereas 63 co-accused were acquitted including the main accused, Maulvi Umarji. Quantum of sentence will be announced on February 25 and it is anticipated that many of those who face sentence by the court would be let free on the ground that they had already completed equal or longer period in jail during the prosecution.
The BJP spokesperson and Supreme Court lawyer Ravishankar Prasad has welcomed the judgment and desired that those guilty should be taken to task for the unfortunate act. On the riots that entailed after the Godhra incident he answered to media persons that both the Gohdra incident and the riots that entailed were unfortunate and the BJP have never condoned the post Godhra reactions in the state. He called the Banerjee report on the S-6 coach as “collusive”.
Hari Prashad, the Congress leader of Gujarat, commented that the verdict is acceptable but innocent should not be punished. He said, “Our stand is vindicated by the fact that a large number of alleged persons have been acquitted by the court.” He apprehended that in a charged communal atmosphere of the state it is possible that the administration would be biased against a certain community.
Who would have imagined that a small alleged scuffle on Godhra platform in the evening of 27th February nine years ago would stain the secular India by a lot of bloodshed? As mentioned by Wikipedia.com, the unprecedented repercussions of the sordid event of burning 58 passengers, mostly Hindu pilgrims, led to “the retaliatory massacres against Muslims on a large scale, in which 790 Muslims and 254 Hindus were killed. 223 more people were reported missing. 523 places of worship were damaged: 298 dargahs, 205 mosques, 17 temples, and 3 churches. Muslim-owned businesses suffered the bulk of the damage. 61,000 Muslims and 10,000 Hindus fled their homes. Preventive arrests of 17,947 Hindus and 3,616 Muslims were made. In total 27,901 Hindus and 7,651 Muslims were arrested. Nearly 10,000 rounds of bullets were fired by the police, killing 93 Muslims and 77 Hindus”.
The local Muslims have been maintaining that the scuffle, the burning of S-6 compartment and the entailing riots were the part of one big conspiracy. Their viewpoint got strength from the report of the Ahmedabad-based Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL), which expressed that “it is impossible that inflammable liquid could have been poured from outside into the train compartment”. One of the reasons it gave was that the height of the window of the coach was around 7 feet from the ground at the place and in the position it was not possible to throw any inflammable fluid inside from outside the coach from any bucket because by doing this, most of the fluid was getting thrown outside. According to the report, inflammable liquid was already present in the train compartment and fire started from inside.
Initial police investigations have also indicated that it could have been a spontaneous riot situation, but the Special Investigation Team (SIT) later said the act was pre-planned. There were allegations that investigations were biased both in the Godhra case and in the Gujarat riots cases, and the Supreme Court finally ordered another SIT investigation in 2008, this time under RK Raghavan. On Godhra, this SIT too endorsed the findings of the earlier SIT, which ultimately led to the acceptance of the conspiracy theory by the court.
A commission set up by the Railways ministry reported in 2005 that the fire was almost certainly an accident, however the Gujarat High Court ruled formation of this enquiry commission by Railways as "illegal" and "unconstitutional". As of now all its probe results stand invalid. Another judicial committee investigating charges under POTA opined in 2005 that the actions of the Muslim mob were most likely spontaneous and not pre-planned. However, a commission set up by the Gujarat government upheld in 2008 the original SIT claims that it was a conspiracy. Now, the court agreed that the incident was a preplanned conspiracy.
The main accused Maulvi Umarji, however, has been acquitted due to lack of evidence, who according to the SIT had ordered four lieutenants to mobilize a mob and fuel to target and burn the S-6 coach carrying Kar Sevaks. The SIT had identified and arrested the 31 people convicted by Justice Patel as a core team that planned the attack. The SIT's conspiracy theory claimed that these 31 people held meetings, planned to target the train when it reached Godhra station and that they burnt the coach.
Trial in the case began in June 2009 with the framing of the charges against the accused, who have been in Sabarmati jail since 2002. All the accused in the case have been charged with criminal conspiracy and murder.
After completion of the hearing last September, the verdict could not be given as there was a Supreme Court stay on it. This stay was lifted on October 26, 2010.
Despite the government's efforts to foster communal harmony, "low police to population ratio, corruption, and an overburdened and antiquated court system", violations of religious freedom exist in India, a U.S. report has said.
While legal protections against violations of religious freedom exist in India, corruption and a lack of sufficient trained police led to the law not always being enforced rigorously, according to a recently released report by the State Department of the United States.
The International Religious Freedom Report 2010, the State Department said that despite government efforts to foster communal harmony, extremist groups continued to view “ineffective investigation and prosecution of attacks on religious minorities” as a signal that they could commit such violence with impunity.
However the report did not completely clear the government of all responsibility for acts of violence relating to religion, in particular suggesting that law enforcement and prosecution was weak due to a “low police to population ratio, corruption, and an overburdened and antiquated court system.”
It argued that some state and local governments also limited religious freedom by maintaining or enforcing existing anti-conversion legislation and by not efficiently or effectively prosecuting those who attacked religious minorities. In particular it noted that there were active anti-conversion laws in six of the 28 states – Gujarat, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh.
Outside of India the report specifically criticised the persecution of minority groups in Pakistan. The report said that Christians, Sikhs, and Hindus reported governmental and societal discrimination in the country.
The manifestation of this discrimination ranged from defining as illegitimate the children born to Hindu or Christian women even after they converted to Islam after marriage, to difficulties faced by Hindus in importing books from India and persistent discrimination against Hindus, Sikhs, and Ahmadis in admission to higher education institutions.
The report also presented an extensive list of incidents across Indian states, in which religious freedoms had been attacked. Most entailed attacks by private citizens and groups on religious minorities and their organisations.
The report further quoted data from the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs’ 2009-10 Annual Report according to which there were 826 instances of communal violence, involving 125 fatalities and 2,424 persons injured.
The data also suggested that there were 750 incidents of Hindu-Muslim violence throughout the country in 2009 resulting in 123 deaths and 2,380 injuries, compared with 656 incidents, including four riots, in 2008 resulting in 123 deaths and 2,272 injuries.
However the report also noted some positive developments relating to religious freedoms. In particular it praised the National Foundation for Communal Harmony for providing assistance for the physical and psychological rehabilitation of child victims of communal, caste, ethnic, or terrorist violence.
In a similar vein the report lauded the Andhra Pradesh government for allocating approximately $5.89 million for the Andhra Pradesh Christian Finance Corporation; the Gujarat High Court for directing the state government to resolve the issue of restoring mosques and dargahs destroyed or damaged during 2002 Gujarat riots; the central government for announcing an increase of $32 million to the National Minorities Development Finance Corporation for funding programs for minority welfare.
Overall the national government, led by the United Progressive Alliance, continued to implement an inclusive and secular platform that included respect for the right to religious freedom, the report said.
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