Vatva lies 18 kilometres from Ahmedabad, on the eastern banks of the Sabarmati where a majority of the city’s Muslim neighbourhoods are. Naimuddin Mohammed Yunus Ansari’s family moved to this polluted industrial settlement last year from Khanpur, the fourth time they have moved house in 10 years. He says they did not return to Naroda Patiya for years because they have found it difficult to put the violence of the 2002 riots out of their minds and go back.
“The mob killed my mother Abida Bibi. They flung my seven-year old niece Gulnaz Bano into the fire. She died. My sister Saeeda died of burns at the hospital the next day. I was attacked by swords and lost my 11-month-old daughter while trying to flee. I found her at the Shah Alam camp two months later,” says Naimuddin. His wife Naseem*(name changed) was gang raped by four men; her left arm chopped off with a sword, he adds.
Naimuddin had been married to Naseem for two years in 2002. Since the attack she has hardly spoken to anyone. She stays indoors because though the doctors at V.S. Hospital managed to reattach her arm back that night, it did not heal fully. She is unable to lift this arm and has burn scars on her back. In 2008, when the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) started collecting evidence in the Naroda Patiya case, Naimuddin made two trips to Gandhinagar and registered a complaint on Naseem’s behalf. But Naseem stayed home. It was only in 2010, when special court judge Jyotsna Yagnik started hearing witnesses’ testimonies that Naimuddin persuaded Naseem to give hers, the only woman to survive gang rape among the hundreds of victims of brutal sexual violence at Naroda Patiya. Last week, the special court convicted 32 people including a former BJP Minister in the Narendra Modi cabinet for their involvement in the Naroda Patiya violence and handed down stiff sentences.
“Jyotsnaben listened so attentively to us, we salute her a hundred times. If the defence lawyers stared at us or tried to intimidate us, she would tell them off. The only thing I do not understand is why were police officers like K.K. Mysorewala and his seniors let off,” says Naimuddin who made a living selling bread and biscuits in Naroda Patiya but has been unable to restart his business since. He works as a daily wage labourer now. “Naseem had always worn a burkha , she could not recognise her rapists. But I recognise those who attacked my family, many of them lived in Gangotri building nearby. I told Naroda police at the Shah Alam relief camp that I recognise the attackers. Many of them used to buy bread from me. I kept saying if you take me to the Gangotri, Gopinath buildings, I can point to their houses but the police did not write my complaint,” says Naimuddin.
‘Avoided investigation’
In her 1969-page order, Justice Yagnik comments that K.K. Mysorewala who was the senior police officer of Naroda police station at the time, and first Investigating Officer, “did not take even elementary and routine steps,” and “avoided investigation.” She notes that the Naroda police did not arrest even one person at the site of violence, did not collect samples from the deceased, did not take statements of victims in the hospital, and did not carry out a test identification parade for the accused. She castigates second Investigating Officer P.N. Barot, and S.S. Chudasama responsible for the investigation between March 8 and April 30, for causing delays by taking statements from Hindu residents even though the majority of the victims were Muslims. Yagnik notes how police had taken down statements in a “self-styled manner” — in one instance a statement was recorded in the name of Shoaib, a 20-day-old infant who was a victim of an acid attack, and made out to be that of a 20-year old man.
The order notes that when Siddique Alabax Mansuri, an eyewitness, said he had seen Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Mayaben Kodnani in the mob, the police refused to note down his complaint. The order, however, does not implead Mysorewala and other officers whom the victims wanted arraigned as accused noting that “in cases of neglect or inefficiency one cannot be labelled to have malice or any criminality.”
Imran Akhtar Sheikh was 16 years old when he lost 19 of his relatives in the riots. Now a 26-year-old electrician, he describes the verdict as “fifty per cent justice”; the rest will come when the administration and the highest executives are punished, he says.
“We ran towards the Special Reserve Police gate at the southern edge of the colony and pleaded to the guards that they take us inside but they did not. The police was carrying out a lathi charge in our direction. In desperation people tried to climb the five-high compound wall topped with glass shards and jumped inside,” he recounts.
Is no police officer responsible or accountable in an incident where 96 persons were killed, several women raped, hundreds of people injured, houses and shops burnt and destroyed?
In June 2009, Jan Sangharsh Manch, a NGO that gave legal aid to Naroda Patiya victims, filed an application requesting that the SIT investigate the role of police officers in charge of Naroda Patiya and analyse the mobile phone data in the CD produced by IPS officer Rahul Sharma, then DIG (CBI) before the Nanavati Commission to establish details of the conspiracy. According to an analysis done by JSM, the phone call data shows that Inspector K.K. Mysorewala was in touch with Bipin Panchal, one of the main accused, and with Jaydeep Patel, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) General Secretary arrested in the massacre at Naroda Gam a few kilometres from Naroda Patiya. Phone call records also show that Mayaben Kodnani and Jaideep Patel were in touch with the Chief Minister’s office and the then Minister of State for Home Gordhan Zadaphiya throughout the period of violence.
P.B. Gondia, DCP Zone IV, where Naroda Patiya, Naroda Gam and Gulberg Society lie, was also in touch with Mayaben Kodnani and Jaydeep Patel. Both Gondia and M.K. Tandon Joint Commissioner in-charge Sector 2, left Gulberg between noon and 4:30 p.m. when the massacre was taking place there and went to the Dariapur area for three hours where was no serious incident of violence. They returned to Gulberg and stayed there till 8 p.m. when the Naroda Patiya violence was on.
“Twice Justice Yagnik directed SIT to give a final report on our application but they gave no response,” says Mukul Sinha, a lawyer and member of JSM.
anumeha.y@thehindu.co.in
Correction
This story was corrected on September 6, 2012 for a factual error
