What does the acquittal of the accused in the 2002 Naroda Gam massacre mean?

Gruesome violence was witnessed in February 2002 in the Naroda Gam locality of Ahmedabad. Fourteen years after the trial started, all 67 surviving accused have been acquitted.

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A special trial court on Thursday acquitted all 67 persons accused of the massacre at the Naroda Gam urban slum in Ahmedabad where at least eleven Muslims lost their lives to a rioting Hindu mob in February 2002, more than a decade after charges were framed in the case in 2009.

Among those acquitted are former Gujarat minister Maya Kodnani, former Bajrang Dal leader Babu Bajrangi and former Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) leader Jaideep Patel. The accused were acquitted of various charges under the Indian Penal Code, 1860 (IPC), including murder, rioting, rioting, armed with deadly weapon, unlawful assembly and criminal conspiracy.

Originally, 86 persons had been named in the first information report and chargesheet filed in the matter by a Supreme Court-appointed special investigative team (SIT) that investigated the matter. Eighteen of them died during the pendency of the trial, while one was discharged.

Soon after principal sessions judge Shubhada Krishnakant Baxi delivered the judgment of acquittal, the accused and their relatives and supporters were seen and heard chanting "Jai Shree Ram" and "Bharat Mata ki jai" outside the City Civil and Sessions Court, Ahmedabad.

Commenting on the verdict, advocate Dushyant Arora told The Leaflet, "Multiple institutions of the State are repeatedly sending one message: Indian Muslims no longer have fundamental rights, are sub-human and should be considered enemies of the State unless proved otherwise and sometimes despite being proved otherwise."

Questioning the independence of the trial court's decision, the Indian National Congress secretary-in-charge K.C. Venugopal said, "The 2002 Gujarat riots are firmly etched in our collective conscience as the most horrific riots in Indian history. History will always remember the shambolic legal proceedings in this case, which have denied closure and justice to thousands of victims."

In a separate development on Friday, the Supreme Court granted bail to eight people convicted for murder under the IPC in the Godhra train burning incident of 2002, while refusing the same to four others.

A division Bench of Chief Justice of India Dr D.Y. Chandrachud and Justice P.S. Narasimha stated that it was inclined to grant bail considering the period of imprisonment undergone (16–18 years) and the non-likelihood of disposal of appeals at an early date.

Among those acquitted

Gruesome violence was witnessed on February 28, 2002 in the adjoining localities of Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gam, situated along the northwestern edge of Ahmedabad. On that day, the VHP, a right-wing Hindu nationalist organisation, had called for a state-wide bandh to condemn the Godhra train-burning incident, in which 59 Hindu pilgrims returning from Ayodhya had been burnt alive.

A mob running into several thousand people attacked the localities, which had a high proportion of Muslim families. Cases of murder, looting, hacking, and rape, including public gang-rapes, were reported. Many were reportedly burnt alive and their bodies hurled into the fire or dry wells.

At least 108 Muslims were killed altogether in these incidents allegedly organised by the Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of the VHP and allegedly supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was in power at the time in Gujarat.

The Naroda Patiya and Naroda Gam incidents were investigated by a Supreme Court-appointed SIT headed by former Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) director R.K. Raghvan. The SIT's report, submitted in 2009, concluded, among other things, that Kodnani and Bajrangi had instigated the mob.

Kodnani, who served as a minister in the Gujarat government when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the state's chief minister, was seen at the scene of the crimes at Naroda Patiya, where she used to run a clinic, and at Naroda Gam, by witnesses who testified in the court. It was claimed that she handed out swords to Hindu rioters, exhorting them to attack Muslims.

Her alibi was corroborated in the SIT court by the then BJP president (and current Union Minister of Home Affairs) Amit Shah, when he deposed as a defence witness in September 2017. Shah had told the court that he had seen Kodnani twice on the day of the massacre; once in the Gujarat legislative assembly, and later at a local civil hospital.

However, the SIT's report had found that Kodnani's phone was located at places where the violence was reported, and she was in contact with the chief minister's office and Gujarat police officials around that time.

"The judgment has been given in a case where the accused are BJP ministers, in a state where the government is run by the BJP and one of the key witnesses was a BJP member and (the current) Union home minister of the country. I don't think any other verdict was expected," Arora opined to The Leaflet.

In August 2012, an SIT court convicted 32 persons for the Naroda Patiya massacre, including Kodnani and Bajrangi. They were convicted for the offences of murder, attempt to murder, criminal conspiracy, spreading enmity and communal hatred and unlawful assembly of the IPC, and for certain offences under the Bombay Police Act, 1951.

Kodnani had been sentenced to 28 years of imprisonment, but her conviction was overturned in 2018 by the Gujarat High Court. Bajrangi's conviction was upheld, but he was granted bail on medical grounds by the Supreme Court in March 2019.

"Perpetrators of heinous communal murders go scot free. That is the rule of BJP's law," tweeted Clifton Rozario of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation, after the acquittal of all the accused in the Naroda Gam massacre was announced.

Bajrangi was seen in a video shot with a hidden-camera by lawyer and former journalist Ashish Khetan (posing as a right-wing researcher), in which Bajrangi can be heard saying, "We didn't spare anyone. I say it even today, they (Muslims) should not be allowed to prosper… After I killed them, I came back home and went to sleep peacefully."

Khetan later deposed as a prosecution witness in three separate Gujarat pogrom trials: the Naroda Patiya, Naroda Gam and Gulbarg Society massacres, as he recorded in his book Under Cover: My Journey Into the Darkness of Hindutva (2021). He also testified before the CBI in Mumbai and the SIT in Gandhinagar. The videos secretly recorded by him were concluded to be genuine by the Forensic Science Laboratory in Jaipur.

On the basis of his admission to having a role in the Naroda Patiya massacre to Khetan, Bajrangi had been convicted in the case.

Also acquitted is Jaideep Patel, who was the general secretary of VHP in 2002. Patel was recorded on tape as stating that the scale of the murder was possible only because of years of groundwork and grassroots mobilisation by the VHP in the area, Khetan's book notes. To be clear, he was not recorded as admitting to being involved in the massacre at the two Naroda localities or the overall Gujarat pogrom.

Imtiaz Qureshi, a resident of Naroda, said his house was looted and a group of people murdered three persons in front of his eyes. He claimed that Thursday's judgment shows that the "judiciary is under pressure", in a statement to news agency PTI.

"If those protecting the law are made to murder the law, then this will drive the country towards destruction. This way, people will lose faith in democracy" said Adib Pathan, whose house was plundered during the violence.

On the acquittal, member of Parliament and former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh said, "[I]t is clear that there has been a categorical lapse on the part of the prosecution in the performance of its role. The only way the prosecution and the prosecuting state can prove this to be false is if they pursue the appeals process with seriousness and expediency."

"In a half-decent democracy, either the trial would have been moved outside the state or the Union home minister would have had the integrity to resign," Arora commented to The Leaflet.

The full judgment of the SIT court in State of Gujarat versus Samir Hashmukhbhai Patel (SESSIONS CASE NO. 203 OF 2009/ FIR NO. 1546/2002/ CASE NO. 1546/2002), which would reveal the reasoning applied by the court to acquit the 67 surviving accused, is yet to be made available.