2002 Gujarat violence
On 28 February 2002, a three-day period of inter-communal violence began in the western Indian state of Gujarat. The burning of a train in Godhra the day before, which caused the deaths of 58 Hindu pilgrims and karsevaks returning from Ayodhya, is cited as having instigated the violence. Following the initial violence, further outbreaks occurred in Ahmedabad for three months; statewide, even further outbreaks of violence against the minority Muslim population of Gujarat continued for the next year.
According to official figures, the riots ended with 1,044 dead, 223 missing, and 2,500 injured. Of the dead, 790 were Muslim and 254 Hindu. The Concerned Citizens Tribunal Report estimated that as many as 1,926 may have been killed. Other sources estimated death tolls in excess of 2,000. In addition to many brutal killings, many rapes were reported, as well as widespread looting and destruction of property. Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat and later Prime Minister of India, was accused of condoning the violence, as were police and government officials who allegedly directed the mob and gave them lists of Muslim-owned properties.
Though officially classified as a communal riot, the events of 2002 have been described as a pogrom by many scholars; some commentators alleged that the attacks had been planned and that the attack on the train was a "staged trigger" to obfuscate what was actually premeditated violence. Instances of mass violence include the Naroda Patiya massacre that took place right next to a police training camp; the Gulbarg Society massacre that killed, among others, Ehsan Jafri, a former parliamentarian; and several incidents in Vadodara city. Scholars studying the 2002 riots state that they were premeditated and constituted a form of ethnic cleansing, and that the state government and law enforcement were complicit in the violence. Observers have stated that these events had met the "legal definition of genocide".
In 2012, Modi was cleared of complicity in the violence by Special Investigation Team appointed by the Supreme Court of India. The SIT also rejected claims that the state government had not done enough to prevent the riots. The Muslim community reacted with anger and disbelief. The Supreme Court rejected multiple legal challenges to the SIT report in subsequent years, and in a 2022 decision ended legal proceedings involving Modi and allegations of state complicity. Approximately 600 individuals were accused in cases related to specific incidents:, approximately 200 people had been convicted, and 150 had received life sentences, with various appeals pending.
Godhra train burning
On the morning of 27 February 2002, the Sabarmati Express, returning from Ayodhya to Ahmedabad, stopped near the Godhra railway station. The passengers were Hindu pilgrims, returning from Ayodhya. An argument erupted between the train passengers and the vendors on the railway platform. The argument became violent and, under uncertain circumstances, four coaches of the train caught fire with many people trapped inside. In the resulting conflagration, 59 people, including women and children, burned to death.The government of Gujarat set up Gujarat High Court judge K. G. Shah as a one-man commission to look into the incident, but following outrage among families of victims and in the media over Shah's alleged closeness to Modi, retired Supreme Court judge G.T. Nanavati was added as chairman of the now two-person commission.
In 2003, The Concerned Citizens Tribunal concluded that the fire had been an accident. Several other independent commentators have also concluded that the fire itself was almost certainly an accident, saying that the initial cause of the conflagration has never been conclusively determined. Historian Ainslie Thomas Embree stated that the official story of the attack on the train was entirely baseless.
The Union government led by the Indian National Congress party in 2005 also set up a committee to probe the incident, headed up by retired Supreme Court judge Umesh Chandra Banerjee. The committee concluded that the fire had begun inside the train and was most likely accidental. However, the Gujarat High Court ruled in 2006 that the matter was outside the jurisdiction of the union government, and that the committee was therefore unconstitutional.
After six years of going over the details, Nanavati-Mehta Commission submitted its preliminary report which concluded that the fire was an act of arson, committed by a mob of one to two thousand locals. Maulvi Husain Haji Ibrahim Umarji, a cleric in Godhra, and a dismissed Central Reserve Police Force officer named Nanumiyan were presented as the "masterminds" behind the arson. After 24 extensions, the commission submitted its final report on 18 November 2014. The findings of the commission were called into question by a video recording released by Tehelka magazine, which showed Arvind Pandya, counsel for the Gujarat government, stating that the findings of the Shah-Nanavati commission would support the view presented by the Bharatiya Janata Party, as Shah was "their man" and Nanavati could be bribed.
In February 2011, the trial court convicted 31 people and acquitted 63 others based on the murder and conspiracy provisions of the Indian Penal Code, saying the incident was a "pre-planned conspiracy."
Of those convicted, 11 were sentenced to death and the other 20 to life in prison. Maulvi Umarji, presented by the Nanavati-Shah commission as the prime conspirator, was acquitted along with 62 others accused for lack of evidence.
Post-Godhra violence
Following the attack on the train, the Vishva Hindu Parishad called for a statewide bandh, or strike. Although the Supreme Court had declared such strikes to be unconstitutional and illegal, and despite the common tendency for such strikes to be followed by violence, no action was taken by the state to prevent the strike. The government did not attempt to stop the initial outbreak of violence across the state. Independent reports indicate that the state BJP president Rana Rajendrasinh had endorsed the strike, and that Modi and Rana used inflammatory language which worsened the situation.Then-Chief Minister Narendra Modi declared that the attack on the train had been an act of terrorism, and not an incident of communal violence. Local newspapers and members of the state government used the statement to incite violence against the Muslim community by claiming, without proof, that the attack on the train was carried out by Pakistan's intelligence agency and that local Muslims had conspired with them to attack Hindus in the state. False stories were also printed by local newspapers which claimed that Muslim people had kidnapped and raped Hindu women.
Numerous accounts describe the attacks on the Muslim community that began on 28 February as highly coordinated with mobile phones and government-issued printouts listing the homes and businesses of Muslims. Attackers arrived in Muslim communities across the region in trucks, wearing saffron robes and khaki shorts, bearing a variety of weapons. In many cases, attackers damaged or burned Muslim-owned or occupied buildings while leaving adjacent Hindu buildings untouched. Although many calls to the police were made from victims, they were told by the police that "we have no orders to save you." In some cases, the police fired on Muslims who attempted to defend themselves. The rioters used mobile phones to coordinate their attacks. By the end of the day on 28 February a curfew had been declared in 27 towns and cities across the state. A government minister stated that although the circumstances were tense in Baroda and Ahmedabad, the situation was under control, and that the police who had been deployed were enough to prevent any violence. In Baroda, the administration imposed a curfew in seven areas of the city.
M. D. Antani, then the deputy superintendent of police, deployed the Rapid Action Force to sensitive areas in Godhra. Gordhan Zadafia, the Minister of State for Home, believed there would be no retaliation from the Hindu community for the train burning. Modi stated that the violence was no longer as intense as it had been and that it would soon be brought under control, and that if the situation warranted it, the police would be supported by deploying the army. A shoot-to-kill order was issued. However the troop deployment was withheld by the state government until 1 March, when the most severe violence had ended. After more than two months of violence a unanimous vote to authorize central intervention was passed in the upper house of parliament. Members of the opposition made accusations that the government had failed to protect Muslim people in the worst rioting in India in more than 10 years.
It is estimated that 230 mosques and 274 dargahs were destroyed during the violence. For the first time in the history of communal riots Hindu women took part, looting Muslim shops. It is estimated that up to 150,000 people were displaced during the violence. It is estimated that 200 police officers died while trying to control the violence, and Human Rights Watch reported that acts of exceptional heroism were committed by Hindus, Dalits and tribals who tried to protect Muslims from the violence.
Attacks on Muslims
In the aftermath of the violence, it became clear that many attacks were focused not only on Muslim populations, but also on Muslim women and children. Organizations such as Human Rights Watch criticised the Indian government and the Gujarat state administration for failure to address the resulting humanitarian condition of victims who fled their homes for relief camps during the violence, the "overwhelming majority of them Muslim." According to Teesta Setalvad on 28 February in the districts of Morjari Chowk and Charodia Chowk in Ahmedabad of all forty people who had been killed by police shooting were Muslim. An international fact-finding committee formed of all women international experts from US, UK, France, Germany and Sri Lanka reported, "sexual violence was being used as a strategy for terrorizing women belonging to minority community in the state."It is estimated that at least 250 girls and women were gang raped and then burned to death. Children were force-fed petrol and then set on fire, pregnant women were gutted and then had their unborn child's body shown to them. In the Naroda Patiya mass grave of ninety-six bodies, forty-six were women. Rioters also flooded homes and electrocuted entire families inside. Violence against women also included them being stripped naked, violated with objects, and then killed. According to Kalpana Kannabiran the rapes were part of a well-organized, deliberate and pre-planned strategy, and which facts place the violence into the categories of political pogrom and genocide. Other acts of violence against women included acid attacks, beatings and the killing of women who were pregnant. Children were also killed in front of their parents. George Fernandes in a discussion in parliament on the violence caused widespread furor in his defense of the state government, saying that this was not the first time that women had been violated and raped in India.
Children were killed by being burnt alive and those who dug the mass graves described the bodies interred within them as "burned and butchered beyond recognition." Children and infants were speared and held aloft before being thrown into fires. Describing the sexual violence perpetrated against Muslim women and girls, Renu Khanna writes that the survivors reported that it "consisted of forced nudity, mass rapes, gang-rapes, mutilation, insertion of objects into bodies, cutting of breasts, slitting the stomach and reproductive organs, and carving of Hindu religious symbols on women's body parts." The Concerned Citizens' Tribunal characterised the use of rape "as an instrument for the subjugation and humiliation of a community." Testimony heard by the committee stated that:
A chilling technique, absent in pogroms unleashed hitherto but very much in evidence this time in a large number of cases, was the deliberate destruction of evidence. Barring a few, in most instances of sexual violence, the women victims were stripped and paraded naked, then gang-raped, and thereafter quartered and burnt beyond recognition. ... The leaders of the mobs even raped young girls, some as young as 11 years old ... before burning them alive. ... Even a 20-day-old infant, or a fetus in the womb of its mother, was not spared.An autopsy report conducted on the deceased women states that the doctor who conducted the post-mortem, found the foetus intact. The doctor, who had conducted the autopsy said to the court that the foetus was intact in the woman's womb.
Vandana Shiva stated that "Young boys have been taught to burn, rape and kill in the name of Hindutva."
Dionne Bunsha, writing on the Gulbarg Society massacre and murder of Ehsan Jafri, has said that when Jafri begged the crowd to spare the women, he was dragged into the street and forced to parade naked for refusing to say "Jai Shri Ram." He was then beheaded and thrown onto a fire, after which rioters returned and burned Jafri's family, including two small boys, to death. After the massacre Gulbarg remained in flames for a week.