The Role of the Police during the Gujarat Riots: The job of the police is to protect all civilians, including Muslims. But according to the IFFM, ??Just as the mobs sought revenge on behalf of Hindu women so too it appears did the Police.?

 Several accounts speak of policemen actively aiding, abetting, and in some cases leading the mobs. Video footage seen by the fact-finding team showed slogan's like, ?Yeh andar ki baat hai, Police hamare saath hai? (The inside story is that the police is on our side) - written boldly on the walls of gutted Muslim homes.

 A pattern that was often repeated was that the Police would open fire at the Muslims rather than at the mob, which was attacking them. For Example, On February 28, of the 40 persons shot dead by the police in Ahmedabad city, 36 were Muslims. (Source: Al Ameen Garib Niwas Hospital). Many minors have been injured in police firing.

 In other cases, the police turned a deaf ear to cries of help, or simply told women, in so many words, that they did not have 'orders from above' to help them.

 Women and children were repeatedly turned away from Police chowkis and stations and told to fend for themselves.

At best, the Police would take a crowd of frightened Muslims and dump them in safer Muslim majority areas. The message was clear - 'Protecting Muslims is not our responsibility; Other Muslims can look after them'. Muslims were no longer citizens of the state.

 In no instance did the fact-finding team hear of Mahila (Women?s) Police being deployed in areas where women were being brutalized. In a vast majority of the cases, FIRs have not been lodged. Several accounts say that the Police simply refuse to lodge the FIR, saying, 'you don't have enough evidence, there is no case'.

 Under the guise of 'combing operations' the Police are picking up young Muslim boys at random. Mothers live in constant fear.

 The fact-finding team heard specific accounts of continuing police atrocities - of women being severely beaten or killed in Police firing.  (The Survivors Speak)

 The NHRC notes that the communal marauders were widely reported to have been ?singling out certain homes and properties for death and destruction in certain districts-sometimes within view of police stations and personnel?? In many cases, including the massacres in Gulbarg society in which former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri was brutally slain, and in Naroda-Patia where more than 80 people died [unofficial figures are much higher], the police have been partisan and anti-Muslim. No satisfactory explanation has been given for the inordinate police delay in intervening in Gulbarg society, despite Jafri's incessant requests for help. In Naroda-Patia, according to survivors, the State Reserve Police [SRP] not only refused the fleeing Muslims shelter, but tear-gassed them, forcing them towards the waiting mobs. In many cases, the police used deadly force against Muslim civilians, including firing, thereby providing cover and support to the rampaging mobs. [IFFM]

 As the Gujarat Chief Minister Modi admitted, 'Police are human beings as well', he said, shortly after the carnage began, 'and not inured to the sentiments of society'. [IFFM]