Human Rights Watch Report
April 2002, Vol. 14, No. 3(C)

IV... OVERVIEW OF THE ATTACKS AGAINST MUSLIMS

State and Police Participation and Complicity  
On the morning of February 27, 2002, the gruesome attack on the Sabarmati Express in Godhra, Gujarat, left fifty-eight dead. The train cars set alight were carrying Hindu kar sevaks (religious volunteers) returning from Ayodhya. By evening, retaliatory attacks against Muslims had begun, including in Rajkot, Vadodara, and Bharuch.50 That same day the Vishwa Hindu Parishad called for a statewide bandh (shut-down) for February 28, a call that according to press reports, its cadre interpreted as a call to action.51 The state's endorsement of the bandh, announced through a press note issued at 8 p.m. on February 27, was taken by the VHP/Bajrang Dal as an endorsement of its stand.52  

State support of the bandh also sent a message to the police. A reporter for the Hindu observed that, "In such a situation, the police would always be hesitant to act lest it hurt the interests of the political bosses. And the saffronised police also found a common cause with the criminals to `punish' the minorities."53 The same reporter wrote that, "insiders in the Bharatiya Janata Party admit that the police were under instructions from the Narendra Modi administration not to act firmly."54  

By the afternoon of February 27, retaliatory attacks had already begun, including the stabbing of a Muslim man in Vadodara railway station as crowds gathered awaiting the arrival of the Sabarmati Express.55 Starting on the morning of February 28, Hindu mobs unleashed a coordinated attack against Muslims in many of Gujarat's towns and cities.56 Despite the state's claims that police were simply overwhelmed by the sheer size of the Hindu mobs-often numbering in the thousands-evidence collected by the media, Indian human rights groups, and Human Rights Watch all point to state sponsorship of the attacks. Eyewitness accounts cited throughout this report, as well as the history of police and political recruitment demonstrate the state's partisan role. In a matter of days, over 850 people are known to have been killed-although unofficial estimates are as high as 2,000. Violence continued as of this writing and has quickly spread to poorly protected rural areas. Accounts of politicians directing the violence are also commonplace. Furthermore, in many cases, police posts and police stations were in close proximity to affected sites.57 

After allowing thirty-six hours to pass without any serious intervention, the first of several contingents of army troops were deployed into Ahmedabad, Rajkot, and Vadodara on March 1.58 Many had to be flown in from reserves' stations in south Indian as the bulk of Indian forces are stationed along the India-Pakistan border.59 Though the army arrived in Gujarat soon after the Godhra carnage,60 the state government refused to deploy the soldiers until twenty-fours hours after they arrived and only once the worst violence had ended.61 The army's inability to rapidly intervene was also hindered by the state government's failure to provide requested transportation support and information regarding areas where violence was occurring.62 Speaking on why the army took so long to quell the violence, an Indian army source stated, "We are ordered to be deployed only when such incidents happen. And once we are there it is up to that state administration how they use us."63 

In Ahmedabad, Gujarat's commercial capital and the site of Human Rights Watch's investigations, many attacks took place within view of police posts and police stations. Human Rights Watch viewed several police posts less than fifty feet from the site of burnt Muslim-owned restaurants, places of businesses, and hotels in Ahmedabad. Without exception, the Hindu-owned establishments neighboring the destroyed structures were unscathed. The same pattern was observed by India's National Human Rights Commission during its fact-finding mission in March (see below). 

Attacks in Ahmedabad on February 28 also began at precisely the same time, around 10:30 in the morning. Muslims living in "mixed communities," that is alongside Hindus, were hit the hardest while those concentrated in Muslim enclaves following a history of state communal riots fared only marginally better.  

According to an article in The Week, a weekly Indian news magazine, 1,679 houses, 1,965 shops, and twenty-one godowns (warehouses) were burnt, 204 shops looted, and seventy-six shrines were destroyed in Ahmedabad. The great majority of them belonged to Muslims.64  

Dozens of witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch described almost identical operations. The attackers arrived by the thousands in trucks, clad in saffron scarves and khaki shorts, the signature uniform of Hindu nationalist, or Hindutva, groups. Shouting slogans of incitement to kill, they were armed with swords, trishuls, 65 sophisticated explosives, and gas cylinders. Guided by computer printouts listing the addresses of Muslim families and their properties, information obtained from the Ahmedabad municipal corporation among other sources, they embarked on a murderous rampage. In many cases, the police led the charge, aiming and firing at Muslims who got in the mobs' way (see below).  

According to the preliminary report of SAHMAT, a Delhi-based nongovernmental organization, its fact-finding team found graffiti left behind on the charred walls of a burnt madrassa in Sundaramnagar, Ahmedabad boasted of police support:66  

      Yeh andar ki bat hai 
      Police hamarey saath hai 
      (This is inside information, the police are with us). 

      Jaan se mar dengey 
      Bajrang Dal zindabad 
      Narendra Modi zindabad 
      (We will kill. Long live the Bajrang Dal. Long live Narendra Modi).67

Andar ki bat hai... was also the war-cry used to terrorize Muslim residents in Vadi in the city of Vadodara as they burnt Muslim-owned shops that ironically sold kites, bindis, and bangles for Hindu festivals.68 

Human Rights Watch interviews with eyewitnesses to the attacks revealed that that the attackers were carrying voter lists as well as listings of Muslim businesses, along with cell phones and water bottles "so as to be fully prepared for a long day's work."69 According to a report in Outlook magazine, attempts to pinpoint the exact location of Muslim businesses began months before the attacks:  

In Ahmedabad... one official recalled how for the last few months, there had been concerted attempts to get lists of Muslim business establishments from the Ahmedabad municipal corporation.... VHP volunteers have also been making the rounds of professional institutions and universities, seeking the names and addresses of Muslim students. Some government sources say VHP members have drawn up lists of government departments (for example, the Food Corporation of India) and their allied agencies, and identified "undesirables" and their addresses.70
Professor Keshavram Kashiram Shastri, ninety-six-year-old chairman of the Gujarat unit of the VHP denied the charge that the VHP prepared lists in advance of Muslim shops to loot. To the contrary, he said "the list of shops owned by Muslims in Ahmedabad was prepared on the morning of February 28 itself."71  

Voter lists were also reportedly used to identify and target Muslim community members.72 A senior police officer told rediff.com, a leading Internet news site on India, on conditions of anonymity that, "[The attackers] hardly failed to lay hands on their targets, thanks to documents like the voters' list.... The mission was accomplished with clinical precision."73  

In many cases the leaders of the attack, who communicated with one another on cell phones, receiving instructions in seemingly well-coordinated and planned operations, have been identified by name in police reports as members of the BJP and the VHP. Few, if any, of the leaders have been arrested (see below).  

As the state offers one excuse after another-that the police were outnumbered, overwhelmed, did not receive orders to respond, or that their own feelings could not be "insulated from the general social milieu" -no excuse proves sufficient to explain the direct participation of police in the attacks.74  

Press reports and eyewitness testimonies, including those collected by Human Rights Watch, abound with stories of police participation and complicity in the attacks. Their crimes range from inaction to direct participation in the looting and burning of Muslim shops, restaurants, hotels, homes, and the killing of Muslim residents. Worse still, officers who tried to keep the peace or act against murderous mobs have been transferred or have faced the wrath of their superiors.75  

A key state minister is reported to have taken over a police control room in Ahmedabad on the first day of the carnage, issuing directions not to rescue Muslims in danger of being killed:  

If VHP-BJP leaders led mobs from the front along with the police, they also took control of the institutional apparatus. Health Minister Ashok Bhatt sat in the Police Control Room in Ahmedabad through the first two days of violence. Given his portfolio, it was an odd place to be but not given his past. Bhatt, along with Union Minister of State for Defence Harin Pathak, faces charges of having incited a mob that murdered a police constable in the course of communal violence on April 25, 1985. According to several eyewitnesses, another State Minister, Harin Pandya, moved through the Paldi area, speaking to leaders of mobs that were burning Muslim homes and shops. [State Home Minister Gordhan] Jhadaphia, who ought to have been in the control room after the violence broke out on February 28, was busy telling reporters that he "did not expect Hindus to retaliate."76
Many people testified that the police led the mobs directly to their homes and places of business. In many instances, the police also fired upon Muslim youth, crushing any organized self-defense against the mobs. (See below).  

A human rights activist who has been visiting relief camps in Ahmedabad on an almost daily basis since the attacks and documenting in detail the nature and methodology of the violence provided valuable insight into the patterns that emerged:  

Most incidents happened at the same time. It was definitely pre-planned. Many were around 10:30 a.m. The role of the police was also very clear. When I interviewed victims, they said that prior to the attacks mass meetings were taking place that were being addressed by local VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders. A rumor was already going around that something was going to happen, long before the Godhra incident.  

The attacks also took place where the Muslim population is low, in areas where people could not adequately defend or protect themselves. The police itself was also involved in almost all incidents. Local MLAs [members of legislative assembly] and corporators [local officials] were also involved. In many cases SRP [State Reserve Police] camps were close by. Everybody knew that attacks were going on but no one tried to prevent them. So many women had been gang-raped and then killed.... Usually in our work we address individual incidents so we have hope for justice. But there is no hope here because the involvement of the police is so high. You feel irrelevant, like you have wasted ten years.77

Twenty-six major towns and talukas (sub-districts) in Gujarat were affected in the first week of violence. Attacks had also spread to rural areas. In Halad village in north Gujarat, for example, hotels and businesses belonging to Muslims were attacked when the dead body of a Hindu activist killed in the train attack in Godhra was brought to the village.78 The patterns of violence in the worst-hit cities, where the majority of people killed were Muslim, were remarkably similar, lending further support to the notion that the attacks were planned and not the result of spontaneous riots. An interim report on violence in Vadodara submitted to the NHRC by the nongovernmental People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), for example, documents in meticulous detail the selective burning and looting of Muslim homes and places of business, the destruction of mosques, the killing, beating, and maiming of Muslims, the extent of police participation in the attacks, and the role of the local media in inciting the violence. The report also documents the spreading of hate propaganda leading to economic boycotts.79 A separate report by PUCL outlines the impact on women (see below). 

At this writing, attacks were being reported on an almost daily basis, over six weeks after the state government's claims that the situation had been brought under control. On March 24, for example, thirty-year-old Mumtazbano was stripped in public and stabbed to death by a mob in the Vejalpur area of Ahmedabad after being dragged off her husband's scooter.80 On April 6, at least five people were killed in Ahmedabad. Two were stabbed to death and three were killed by police gunfire as police reportedly fired to disperse clashing groups of Hindus and Muslims.81 On April 17, three people were stabbed to death and fifteen were injured in Hindu-Muslim clashes in Ahmedabad.82 

Police Firings  
"They only shot at one side. Why? Why didn't they shoot to stop the attackers?" 83 

Numerous eyewitnesses to the attacks in Ahmedabad told Human Rights Watch that police gunfire paved the way for the violent mobs. Marching in front of the mobs, the police burst tear gas shells and aimed and fired at Muslim youth seeking to defend their families and their homes. According to a report in The Week, a weekly Indian news magazine, in the month following the Godhra massacre, 120 people had been killed in police shootings throughout the state, many of them Muslim.84 At this writing, the numbers were climbing. Hindus were also killed in police shootings, some in response to shoot-on-sight orders issued by Chief Minister Modi on March 1 to stop those participating in rioting and arson, and others in the weeks that followed as police tried to contain outbreaks of violence.85 

During the first two days of violence, Chief Minister Modi defended the actions of his police stating that they had "mowed down people" to quell the violence. According to the Indian Express, "one such incident he was referring to occurred on February 28 and March 1 near the Bapunagar police station, where 40 were killed in firing. Now, according to a batch of FIRs filed last week and post mortem reports, it has come to light that all 40 were Muslims, most of them shot in the head and the chest. And 36 of them were between 20 and 25 years old."86 

A resident of the Chartoda Kabristan camp in the Gomtipur area told Human Rights Watch: "We were able to handle the crowd but when the police joined in then we couldn't stop them. Our spirit was broken. They were shouting, `Kill them, cut them, look for Miyabhai [Muslim man].' The police burned the houses with their own hands. They also looted. Now everyone is afraid of the police; they were only firing on Muslims. They were not firing for riot control."87 

According to the Chartoda Kabristan camp organizer: 

From the areas represented in this camp, twenty-five people were hit in police and private firings. Sixteen died, the rest are in hospitals.... There are still burnings going on.... If they keep dividing people then people will keep losing faith in this state. They need to put a brake on it. If the state does not want to stop it then it will keep happening. Everyone will tell you that the police came first, fired and then the private attackers came.88
Twenty-five-year-old Abdul Aziz, a resident of Panna Lal ki Chali, near Chartoda Kabristan, witnessed the killing of his brother by police gunfire. He told Human Rights Watch:  
On the 28th afternoon at 3 p.m. my younger brother was returning from work. The police said that a curfew was in place. A crowd gathered to attack. The police was leading the crowd. They were looting and the people followed, looting and burning behind them. The crowd was shouting, "Go to Pakistan. If you want to stay here become Hindu." The police very clearly aimed at my brother and fired at him. He was twenty-three years old. At 6 p.m., three hours later, we were able to get him to the hospital.... We have not filed any complaints. All the doctors that have been coming here are private or from NGOs.89 
Julamasul Abdul Bhai Kureishi, of Danzi ki Chali near Chartoda Kabristan, lost his son to police gunfire. He told Human Rights Watch:  
They made us homeless and they took my son.... The police came from one side and the crowd came from the other. They started setting fire to things and firing shots. My son was shot and killed. He was twenty-two years old. They collected all the young men. The police were calling the crowds. The police had the mob behind them. 
Another resident of Danzi ki Chali told Human Rights Watch: "The police grabbed me and hit me with a sword and a lathi [baton]. They also shot my seven-year-old son. He spent eleven to twelve days in the hospital."  

Twenty-two-year-old Mohammed Salim from Bara Sache ki Chali told Human Rights Watch that most of the deaths in his neighborhood were caused by police shooting. He described a pattern testified to by many interviewed by Human Rights Watch:  

The Hindus called us outside to fight. When we came out, the police fired on us, twelve to thirteen people died.... They said come forward, then they started shouting, "Kill the Muslims, cut the Muslims, loot the Muslims." The police were with them and picked out the Muslim homes and set them on fire. The police aimed and fired at the Muslim boys. They then joined with the Hindus to set fire to the homes and to loot the homes. The police were carrying kerosene bottles and shooting and setting the bottles on fire. The others were carrying swords and trishuls. Some of the attackers were wearing kesri pattis [saffron bandannas] on their foreheads with the words "Jai Sri Ram" [Praise Lord Ram]. The attackers consisted of both people from our neighborhood and also people from outside. None of the deaths from our area were from the Bajrang Dal, it was all from police firing. One person also lost his eyesight as a result of police firing. One woman was burnt alive. She was old and couldn't run. She was cut in three pieces. The police came inside [the Chartoda Kabristan area] and fired.90 
A fifteen-year-old boy named Sanu from the Riyaz Hussain ki Chali was also killed. According to residents of the Chartoda Kabristan camp, "The police caught him from inside the Masjid, took him to the Hindu area and shot him at close range."91 

50 "Time Line," Hindustan Times, March 3, 2002.  

51 Sujan Datta, "When guardians of Gujarat gave a 24-hour license for punitive action," Telegraph, March 9, 2002, http://www.telegraphindia.com/archive/1020310/front_pa.htm#head1 (accessed April 9, 2002).  

52 Ibid.  

53 Manas Dasgupta, "Saffronised police show their colour," Hindu, March 3, 2002.  

54 Ibid.  

55 "Violence Spreads Like Wildfire in State," Times of India, February 28, 2002.  

56 Muslims make up about 10 percent of Gujarat's fifty million-strong population. Praveena Sharma, "Woman stripped and stabbed, Indian rights watchdog slams Gujarat for riots," Agence France-Presse, March 24, 2002.  

57 A Muslim hotel was burnt right across from the police commissioner's headquarters. Human Rights Watch visit to Ahmedabad, March 22, 2002.  

58 Sujan Datta, "Where had all the soldiers gone?", Telegraph, March 2, 2002.  

59 Ibid. The long delay in deploying the army in Gujarat is strikingly similar to the failure to immediately deploy the army after mobs began attacking New Delhi's Sikh population after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination. Asia-Pacific Human Rights Network, Gujarat riots point to need for police reform, (a joint initiative of the South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre and the Human Rights Documentation Center), March 13, 2002, http://www.hrdc.net/sahrdc/hrfeatures/HRF53.htm (accessed April 10, 2002).  

60 Rajart Pandit, "Centre Delayed Deployment of Paramilitary Forces," Times of India, March 3, 2002. 

61 Beth Duff-Brown, "India's Religious Violence Spreads to Rural Villages in Gujarat," Associated Press, March 2, 2002. 

62 Rahul Bedi, "Soldiers `held back to allow Hindu revenge,'" Telegraph, April 4, 2002.  

63 Rajart Pandit, "Centre Delayed Deployment of Paramilitary Forces," Times of India. 

64 Anosh Malekar, "Silence of the Lambs," The Week, April 7, 2002. 

65 A three-pronged spear often carried as weapons by militant sangh parivar activists. Trishuls also feature prominently in the depiction of some Hindu gods. 

66 SAHMAT, or the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust, is a collective of artists, intellectuals, and others working to promote the idea of a secular, democratic, Indian state.  

67 Ibid.  

68 Barkha Dutt, "Opinion: Covert Riots And Media," Outlook, March 25, 2002.  

69 Human Rights Watch interviews with eyewitnesses (names withheld), Ahmedabad, March 22-23, 2002. 

70 Ranjit Bhushan, "Thy Hand, Great Anarch: The overriding theme of the riots: surprisingly systematic targeting, little state intervention," Outlook, March 18, 2002. District administrations in Gujarat, Delhi, and Orissa were also conducting surveys to assess the activities and whereabouts of minority community members and leaders. Human Rights Watch, World Report 2001: Events of 2000 (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2000), p. 198.  

71 "Riots in Ahmedabad, India-`It Had to be Done,'" rediff.com, March 13, 2003, http://www.ncmonline.com/content/ncm/2002/mar/0313riots.html (accessed April 9, 2002).  

72 "Misuse of voters list in Gujarat riots alleged," Press Trust of India, March 12, 2002.  

73 Nirendra Dev, "Gujarat riot victims allege `communal cleansing'," rediff.com, March 12, 2002, http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/mar/12train1.htm (accessed April 10, 2002). 

74 Ahmedabad Commissioner of Police P.C. Pande as quoted in Reuters: Sanjay Miglani, "Hindu mobs rampage in India, army called out," Reuters, February 28, 2002. State Director General of Police K. Chakravarty said that his forces were overstretched and given the simultaneous and large-scale nature of the violence added that, "available forces may not have been able to do justice." Bhushan, "Thy Hand, Great Anarch."  

75 Basant Rawat, "Minority hole in Gujarat police force," Telegraph, March 26, 2002, http://www.telegraphindia.com/archive/1020327/front_pa.htm#head7 (accessed April 9, 2002). 

76 Praveen Swami, "Saffron Terror," Frontline, March 16 - 29, 2002. Bhatt is also facing murder charges in the killing of a police constable during anti-reservation riots in the state in April 1985. "Contempt, perjury proceedings sought against Bhatt," Times of India, November 8, 2001. 

77 Human Rights Watch interview, Ahmedabad, March 23, 2002.  

78 Uday Mahurkar, "Godhra: Horror on 9618 DN," India Today, March 11, 2002. 

79 People's Union for Civil Liberties, "An Interim Report to the National Human Rights Commission," March 21, 2002, http://www.pucl.org (accessed April 13, 2002). In Rajkot, the police chief reportedly switched off his cell phone and vanished as mobs took to the street burning one Muslim shop after another on February 28. Sudhir Vyas, "Police chief vanishes as Rajkot burns," Times News Network, March 1, 2002; Muslim truck drivers were also killed by Hindu gangs manning the roadblocks on the national highway leading to Bombay. Luke Harding, "Police took part in slaughter," Observer, March 3, 2002.  

80 "Woman stripped, Fresh violence in Gujarat," Asian Age, March 25, 2002; "Woman stripped and stabbed, Indian rights watchdog slams Gujarat for riots," Agence France-Presse, March 24, 2002.  

81 "Five killed as fresh violence hits India's Gujarat," Channelnewsasia, April 6, 2002. 

82 "Fresh Violence in Gujarat," BBC News, April 17, 2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1934000/1934669.stm (accessed April 17, 2002). 

83 Human Rights Watch interview with forty-five-year-old female resident of Chartoda Kabristan camp, March 23, 2002.  

84 Malekar, "Silence of the Lambs," The Week.  

85 See for example, "Seven Hindus killed in Udhampur attack," Press Trust of India, April 8, 2002; "3 Killed in India Mob Violence," Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2002. In Ahmedabad, 249 bodies had been recovered by the night of March 5. Thirty were of Hindus; thirteen were shot by the police, while several others died in attacks on Muslim-owned establishments. Praveen Swami, "Saffron Terror," Frontline, March 16 - 29, 2002.  

86 Janyala Sreenivas, "Who shot them point blank?" Indian Express, April 7, 2002.  

87 Human Rights Watch interview (name withheld), Ahmedabad, March 23, 2002.  

88 Human Rights Watch interview, Chartoda Kabristan camp organizer, Ahmedabad, March 23, 2002.  

89 Human Rights Watch interview, Abdul Aziz, Ahmedabad, March 23, 2002.  

90 Human Rights Watch interview, Mohammed Salim, Ahmedabad, March 23, 2002. 

91 Ibid.