The "Clean Chit" To Modi

The court has given a clean chit to Narendra Modi in the Gulbarga Society Massacre which led to the grotesque killing of Ahsan Jafri .He was cut limb by limb and his body was burnt -and as such it was not found .Only a pair of chhapals stand testimony to the fact that he existed .Who was Ahsan Jafri?Jafri was a a man who was popular enough to win the Ahmedabad Lok Sabha seat post emergency when Mrs Gandhis Congress was swept out of power post the 1977 Emergency Elections . .He was also a poet and a literary figure and even  wrote a book "Qandeel "(Lantern). On 28 February 2002,(a day after the Godhra massacre ) when riots broke out in Gujarat, he was killed by a rampaging extremist Hindu mob. By early morning, a large mob gathered at the Gulbarg Society in the Chamanpura suburb of Ahmedabad.This is a area very near the Police Commisioners area and which i passed many times while at Ahmedabad . It  was an almost entirely Muslim housing society where the septuagenarian Ahsan Jafri lived. According to First Information Report of the incident filed by police inspector K.G. Erda, the violent extremist Hindu mob started attacking Muslim owned establishments in the morning and were dispersed by the police. However, they reassembled around 1 PM armed with swords, sticks, pipe and kerosene,and  had blown up gas cylinders to blast through walls in the Gulbarga society. The report also mentions that the rioters were guided by voter lists and computer printouts with the addresses of Muslim-owned properties. This claim was repeated by  witnesses presented before the Nanavati Commission. Believing the area to be safe given Jafri's presence, many Muslims in the area had gathered in his compound. Around 10:30 in the morning, the Ahmedabad Commissioner of Police, P.C. Pandey, personally visited Jafri and apparently assured him that police reinforcement would be coming. In the next five hours, Jafri and top Congress officials of the state repeatedly kept calling the police and other government officials requesting safe transport for the residents, but no help arrived.The FIR by Erda further stated that the police station had 130 policemen on duty that day, and were well armed with teargas shells. However, no one was deployed to disperse the crowd, despite Ehsan Jafri and top Congress politicians repeatedly contacting the Director General of Police, Police Commissioner, the Mayor, Leader of Opposition in the State parliament, and other top government officials.Nothing happened .!!The crowd went on a rampage .Around the same time another massacre was taking place at Naroda Patiya a  few kilometres away .It was one of Indias darkest days and showed how ineffective governance can reduce human beings to beasts .
There is no reason to celebrate the courts verdict .Whether Modi was directly involved or not is not the central question .There may be proof or there may not be proof of his involvement .The fact remains -who is accountable for the law and order in a state in a democracy ?It is the CM of the State .Morally he will always be talked about in Indian History as the Nero who fiddled with the harp as Rome burned .For me -he will always be like the father in a family who was either incompetent or indifferent to the plight of his wife ,daughters ,and sons being raped or killed .I am afraid this is the stigma he will have to live with -much like Rajive Gandhi role in the anti Sikh riots .There are are certain things which are wrong always -irrespective of which Party you belong to .And there are certain things which will never go away -even if you become the PM or President ,or a demi God .