by Rama Lakshmi
Five years after one of India's worst episodes of Hindu-Muslim violence, a
series of videotaped confessions released Thursday showed Hindu activists
acknowledging their roles in the killings and detailing blatant state
collusion.
In the video footage, recorded as part of an undercover expose by a New
Delhi-based weekly magazine called Tehelka, Hindu activists and politicians
bragged about hacking Muslims to death and burning their bodies. One
assailant said he slit open a pregnant woman's stomach.
The violence began in February 2002 when a Muslim mob torched a train
in India's western Gujarat state, killing 58 Hindu passengers. Angry Hindu
groups launched a wave of reprisal killings and set fire to Muslim homes and
shops across the region. In all, an estimated 1,000 people died. . . .
At a packed news conference on Thursday, the editor of Tehelka, Tarun
Tejpal, released the magazine's forthcoming issue, which contains 106 pages
of coverage on the killings. . . .
The video footage, by Ashish Khetan, a reporter for the magazine, showed
Hindu activists confessing to dousing petrified Muslims in kerosene and
burning them alive. The footage also showed a Hindu nationalist politician
saying that the chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, had "given us
three days time to do whatever we could. After three days, he asked to stop
and everything came to a halt." . . .
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"Godhra bogie was burnt from inside:
Report," Times of India, July 3, 2002
Luke Harding, "Heart of
Darkness," Guardian, September 15, 2003
"Fresh probe
in India train attack," BBC News, July 14, 2004
VIDEO: "Final
Solution - Massacres in India," google.com, July 23, 2006
[An Oct. 26 A-section article about the 2002 riots in India's Gujarat state
said the violence began when a Muslim mob torched a train. Although many
authorities have alleged arson, the cause of the fire remains in dispute,
and one government panel has said an accident caused the blaze.--"CORRECTIONS," Washington Post, October 31, 2007]
