Terming the anniversary of the Godhra train carnage, that left 59 karsevaks dead and triggered one of worst communal riots in India, as the "10th year of shame", suspended IPS officer Sanjeev Bhatt on Monday criticised Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi saying that democracy was being killed in the state.
Ten years after the burning train of Godhra, Gujarat is caught in the dilemma between pragmatic concerns of sustaining development and the moral and ethical obligations of a just and fair society, writes Shreekant Sambrani.
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to examine if the Special Investigation Team appointed by it to inquire into the 2002 post-Godhra riot cases can share its report with the Nanavati Commission, which too is probing into the Godhra train carnage and the subsequent riots. A bench headed by Justice D K Jain said it will look into the matter, when the SIT approached it with a plea for its direction on the issue, saying the commission has issued notices to its officers.
Nineteen people were killed and 20 others injured in a head-on collision between a tractor and a truck in Gujarat's Panchmahal district, police said on Friday. The incident occurred late on Thursday night near Veganpur village of Godhra taluka when a tractor, carrying devotees, was hit by a speeding truck coming from the opposite direction, said Police Inspector Godhra J H Pandya. Nineteen people travelling in the tractor were killed on the spot and 20 others were injured.
Wanted diamond merchant Nirav Modi, who remains behind bars in a London prison as he contests his extradition to India on charges of fraud and money laundering in the estimated $2-billion Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam case, will find out the UK court's ruling in the nearly two-year-long legal battle on Thursday. The 49-year-old is expected to appear via videolink from Wandsworth Prison in south-west London at Westminster Magistrates' Court, where District Judge Samuel Goozee is set to hand down his judgment on whether the jeweller has a case to answer before the Indian courts. The magistrates' court ruling will then be sent back to UK Home Secretary Priti Patel for a sign off, with the possibility of appeals in the High Court on either side depending on the outcome.
Maulvi Hussain Umarji's son was jubilant over his father being acquitted in the Godhra case. "From the very beginning, due to faulty investigation of the agencies, my old father was confined to prison for eight long years. I think a big injustice was done to us," Saeed Umarji, son of Syed Hassan Umarji, said.
Bilkis Bano was gangraped in March, 2002, while she was pregnant.
Gujarat high court on Monday adjourned till September 27 the hearing on a petition by an NGO seeking to summon Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and others in connection with 2002 Godhra riots.
As per the affidavit, he was booked under Indian Penal Code Sections 147 (rioting) 149 (rioting, armed with deadly weapon), 436 (arson), 332 (causing hurt to deter public servant), 143 (unlawful assembly) and 380 (theft).
The Gujarat high court on Tuesday granted temporary bail to Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Babu Bajrangi, serving life sentence in the 2002 Naroda Patia massacre case, to undergo treatment for an eye ailment.
A private helicopter carrying self-styled godman Asaram Bapu's son Narayan Sai and three others crash-landed, apparently due to a technical snag, in a cemetery at Gomatipur area in Ahmedabad, police said.
Tanvir Jaffrey, the son of former member of Parliament Ehsaan Jaffrey, who was killed in the post-Godhra riots in 2002, has lodged a complaint against the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's Praveen Togadia.
Zakia, the wife of Ehsan Jafri, an ex-MP who was killed in one of the worst incidents during the riots, has challenged the Gujarat high court's October 5, 2017 order rejecting her plea against the SIT's decision.
She said she has not yet thought about joining active politics, but will continue to remain a Bharatiya Janata Party worker.
The Gujarat Anti-Terrorist Squad has arrested an alleged Students Islamic Movement of India operative, who was wanted in the 2008 serial bomb blasts in the city, from Belgam in Karnataka.
Gujarat Chief Minister and the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has been repeatedly denied a visa by the United States authorities for his suspected role in the 2002 post-Godhra riots.
The prosecution is likely to seek capital punishment for the 11 convicted who were charged with murder, while the lawyer of victims may seek life imprisonment for them.
On a petition filed by former Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani, SIT judge P B Desai summoned Shah to appear before the court on September 18.
Leader of the Opposition in the Gujarat assembly, Shankarsinh Waghela on Wednesday asked Prime Minister elect Narendra Modi to build a Ram temple at Ayodhya within the constitutional framework now that the Bharatiya Janata Party has got an absolute majority, in a speech that was blended with sarcasm and praise.
Have we been allowed to forget Partition? Isn't Partition the reason many Hindus cannot bring themselves to trust Muslims? So many Muslims born after 1947 have told me with anguish: "How long will we be blamed for Partition?" notes Jyoti Punwani.
A police officer and two Bharatiya Janata Party leaders wanted by the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team in connection with the post-Godhra riot cases on Wednesday surrendered before a court in Ahmedabad and were arrested.
PM Modi's statement on Wednesday led ally Shiv Sena to rake up his past when he was chief minister during the 2002 Gujarat riots.
These persons are accused of killing 17 people in Delol village, about 30km from Godhra, in March 2002 and then destroying the evidence.
Gujarat government has given one year extension to Justice Nanavati and Justice Mehta Commission probing 2002 Godhra and post-Godhra communal riots, state government officials said on Thursday.
Justices M R Shah and K S Jhaveri ordered, "Not before me", withdrawing themselves from hearing appeals of around 29 convicts.
Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray has said he prevailed on the Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani not to remove Narendra Modi from the chief ministerial chair in Gujarat after the Godhra riots.
The dismissal means the officer will not get benefits entitled to retired government employees.
"The mobile phone records dating back to the post-Godhra riots of 2002 clearly establish a pattern of conspiracy," Mukul Sinha, an advocate from a non-government organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch told the Nanavati-Shah Commission in Ahmedabad.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Gujarat government to constitute within 10 days a special investigation team to re-investigate 14 cases pertaining to the post-Godhra communal riots. A bench headed by Justice Arjit Pasayat said the SIT would submit its report in a sealed cover to the court in 3 months.
'I don't think there is a need to order a fresh investigation into the complaint against Modi & Co. As the amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran said in his report to the Supreme Court, the existing material is more than sufficient to prosecute Modi and other high-ups of his regime,' Manoj Mitta, author of the book The Fiction Of Fact-Finding: Modi and Godhra tells Rediff.com's Prasanna D Zore.
"Just because Modi enjoys the patronage of senior BJP leader L K Advani, the opposition leader in the Lok Sabha, the latter cannot escape culpability for the mass murder," Lalu said.
The question, whether these CDs are authentic or not, has to be cleared first," Justice G T Nanavati, chairman of the two-member commission probing the Godhra train carnage and the subsequent riots said while hearing the matter.
"The Prime Minister is trying to threaten us that if Congress comes to power, all the post-Godhra riot cases will be reopened and those involved in it will be punished, Do not try to threaten Gujarat," Modi said while addressing an election rally at the communally sensitive locality of Dairapur in Ahmedabad.
IPS officer R S Bhagora, currently serving in Gujarat, has been convicted along with four other policemen by the Bombay high court recently after the trial court had acquitted them.
The probe team's chief at that time, R K Raghavan, in his new book, said it required "tremendous persuasion" to make Modi agree to a short recess. "This was possibly Modi's concession to the need for a respite for Malhotra rather than for himself. Such was the energy of the man."
Eight persons were sentenced to life while three others were awarded three years imprisonment by a Godhra court in the 2002 Eral massacre case that left seven people dead in the aftermath of the Godhra riots.
UK awaits final court orders to extradite Sanjeev Chawla to India
A bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and Deepak Gupta said the matter will be heard on November 19, as the court has not gone through the petition in detail.
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