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Saturday, Oct 27, 2007
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Modi didn’t go to massacre site: BJP

Special Correspondent

“Tehelka expose aimed at Assembly polls”

NEW DELHI: The Bharatiya Janata Party said on Friday that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi did not visit Naroda Patiya in Ahmedabad immediately after the massacre, post-Godhra carnage in 2002, as claimed by the Tehelka expose telecast on Thursday night by Aaj Tak and Headlines Today.

Party spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad defended Mr. Modi and expressed “regret” for what happened in Gujarat 2002.

As for the allegation that Mr. Modi visited Naroda Patiya immediately after the massacre of some dozens of Muslims to “bless” the rioters, praise their “good work” and encourage them, Mr. Prasad said that Mr. Modi had not gone there that day. “A Chief Minister’s movements are recorded. This can be verified.”

Asked whether the BJP would benefit electorally from the expose, he said: “No comments”.

He said the “expose” was trying to deflect the current debate focussed on development in Gujarat, and blamed the Congress. Why had Tehelka not done any sting on a Congress Chief Minister or in a State ruled by the Congress, he asked. The timing strongly suggested that it was aimed at impacting the Gujarat Assembly election.

“Empty boasts”

Mr. Prasad said some of the men making “confessions” of terrible murders in the expose could be making “empty boasts,” some might have been “entrapped” and “if there was some truth as well, this should be dealt with by the judicial process.”

Could the BJP explain why and how its ideology bred persons who “boasted” on television that they dismembered a person or slit open the stomach of a pregnant woman? To this, Mr. Prasad said: “The BJP does not appreciate comments about dismembering people or roasting them alive in fires.”

Arun Jaitley, party general secretary and in charge of the Gujarat elections, was away in Ahmedabad. He was not available for comments.

BJP president Rajnath Singh indicated that senior leaders would meet to decide on how to tackle the issue, which the party called a “Congress conspiracy to raise the communal temperature in Gujarat.”

“Why is the Congress hobnobbing with Gordhan Jhadafiya, who was Home Minister in Gujarat at the time of the riots and has now been thrown out of the BJP,” some party leaders asked.

As for the direct indictment of one BJP MLA who allegedly led a murderous mob in 2002, Mr. Prasad said it was for the party’s State unit to initiate disciplinary action, if it was needed.

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