Narendra Modi to get Canadian, US visa soon!

Narendra Modi to get Canadian, US visa soon!

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is likely to get a Canadian visa followed shortly by the much denied and coveted US visa, diplomatic sources at the highest level revealed to Zee News.This comes in the wake of a billion dollar partnership which Gujarat, growing at the rate of 12 percent, has struck with US companies.When contacted by Zee News, an office

Arson ruling reopens train deaths conflict

Gujarat state Chief minister, Narendra Modi, was accused of allowing the attacks to take place and of stoking religious hatred. Photo / AP

The dispute surrounding one of the most controversial incidents in recent Indian history has been reopened after a court ruled that a fire that tore through a railway carriage and killed dozens of Hindu pilgrims was started by a Muslim mob and was not the result of an accident.

The blaze on the train nine years ago was the trigger for rampaging communal violence in which hundreds of Muslims were subsequently attacked and killed.

A special court in the western state of Gujarat yesterday found 31 people guilty of being part of a conspiracy to set fire to a carriage of the Sabarmati Express as it was waiting in the town of Godhra in February 2002.

Most of the 60 people who died were Hindu activists. As news of the deaths spread, Hindu mobs embarked on revenge attacks on Muslims in locations across Gujarat that resulted in the death of more than 1000 people. The state's chief minister, Narendra Modi, was accused of allowing the attacks to take place and of stoking religious hatred.

In the aftermath of the train fire, about 100 Muslims were arrested and charged. But the case was stalled as a result of a series of separate inquiries, at least one of which concluded that the blaze was started by a cooking fire.

The court in yesterday's hearing, which also found more than 60 of the accused not guilty, including the alleged ringleader, will deliver its sentence tomorrow.

After the verdict was announced, special public prosecutor JM Panchal claimed the ruling would put an end to the dispute over the cause of the fire. "The motive of conspiracy was to set the train on fire," he said. "There can be no debate on the judicial verdict. The verdict is based on oral evidence and eyewitness accounts."

But that is unlikely. While a 2008 inquiry by the state authorities also concluded the fire had been started deliberately, an earlier federal inquiry into the blaze ruled that it was most likely the result of an accident in the train's kitchen. Other unofficial investigations into the fire suggested that while it was started deliberately, there had been no pre-planning.

"This controversy is not going to go away," said Mujibur Rehman, a professor of political science at Delhi's Jamia Millia University.

"The 31 people who have been convicted will appeal against the verdict while the authorities will probably appeal against the decision to acquit the 60 who walked away."

The arson attack on the train was inextricably linked with two other deeply controversial incidents of inter-religious violence. Most of the activists who were killed aboard the Sabarmati Express had been returning from a ceremony at the Ayodhya temple in the state of Bihar, where a Muslim mosque had been torn down by Hindus in 1992.

In the weeks following the Sabarmati blaze, Muslims were assaulted and killed in revenge attacks that marked perhaps the worst religious violence in India since Partition.

YEARS OF RAGE

1992: The Babri mosque in Ayodhya is destroyed by radical Hindus who want a temple in its place. The destruction triggers Hindu-Muslim riots in which more than 2000 people die.

2002: Dozens of Hindu pilgrims are killed on a train while returning from Ayodhya. News of the death sparks riots which see 1000 Muslims killed.

2005: An inquiry concludes the fire was accidental. Three years later, a state inquiry says it was started deliberately.

2011: Thirty-one Muslims are convicted of conspiracy to set fire to a carriage of the train.

Godhra victims, VHP angry with Narendra Mod

Godhra victims, VHP angry with Narendra Modi



”Can you get us some help beta? Some money? Everyone has forgotten us.” The predicament of Shantaben Patel (54), sobbing before this reporter in her two-room home in the dusty Ahmedabad suburb of Amraiwadi, is common to many families of 59 ram sewaks (servants of Ram) burned alive during a riotous a

ttack by a Muslim mob on coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express on February 27, 2002, in Godhra.

As a special court prepares to deliver on Tuesday its verdict on Godhra, the first of nine Gujarat riot cases overseen by the Supreme Court, Hindustan Times tracked down some of the families: Facing penury with the death of earning members, most felt abandoned by a government that cashed in on the killings, sweeping Narendra Modi and the BJP to an unchallenged reign of Gujarat since.

The BJP and its ally, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), paraded charred bodies through the streets, and Modi said on February 27, 2002: “It (the burning of coach S-6) was a preplanned act. The culprits will have to pay for it. It was not communal violence. It was a violent, one-sided, collective act by only one community.”

Was the burning, as the police story goes, a “pre-planned conspiracy” or a spontaneous riot? This is the crux of the case being heard since May 2009 by designated judge P R Patel at his high-security courtroom in the Sabarmati Jail.

Whichever way the judgement goes, the resentment of the families and the VHP, which stays in touch with many of them, will remain.

VHP members interviewed were deeply resentful of Modi, but they did not want that resentment made public. All that VHP president Pravin Togadia said was: “The VHP is committed to Hinduism and so we have distanced ourselves from the BJP.”

The VHP and the Bajrang Dal, its fellow cousin in the Sangh Parivar, the union of Hindu outfits, played a key role in the anti-Muslim riots that claimed more than 1,200 lives after Godhra. Many VHP members got BJP tickets in the assembly elections that followed in December 2002.

Relations soured when more than 2,000 footsoldiers of the VHP and Bajrang Dal were arrested after hundres of riot cases were reopened by Modi’s government on orders from the Supreme Court.

During the 2007 elections, all the VHP men who got tickets in 2002 were dropped, among them Haresh Bhatt, the Godhra MLA who was swept to victory in an anti-Muslim tide. Bhatt has since dropped out of politics and the Congress has now won Godhra.

“We were used by Modisaab, used!” said an angry office bearer of the VHP, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Now that he has cemented his position, he wants to be seen as pro-development. He has abandoned those who died for him in Godhra. Who will support their families?”

“It is like we have been wiped out from Modi’s memory,” said an angry woman who lost her father and brother at Godhra. Speaking on condition of anonymity from her two-room home in the district of Anand, she said she worked as a seamstress for Rs 1,800 a month. “Has he forgotten the votes he got from our pain?”

In Amraiwadi, Shantaben explained how hard it was to survive on the Rs 2,000 her husband, Isswarbhai Keshavji Patel (58), is paid as a shop assistant. Above her is a garlanded photo of her son, Chiraj, who was a copper worker. “If he was alive,” said Shantaben, as she wiped her tears with her frayed saree. “He would have been our crutch.”

US shared with India Lashkar plot to kill Narendra Modi

US shared with India Lashkar plot to kill Narendra Modi

The Lashkar-e-Toiba’s plan to kill Narendra Modi last year, as gleaned from a Wikilieaks cable, was shared by the United States with India, sources have said.

Sources have said the US tipped off the Ministry of Home Affairs here, which in turn, alerted the police of both Gujarat and Maharashtra about the planned attacks on Modi

The specific intel received was that Modi would be targetted by the terrorist group when he campaigned in Maharashtra before the state’s Assembly elections. Around this time, intelligence had also sniffed a plot to blow up the Somnath Temple in Saurashtra, Gujarat.

The Bharatiya Janata Party will also request Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to upgrade the security cover of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi who is on the hitlist of the Lashkar-e-Toiba and other terrorist groups.

The plan to kill Modi was discussed last June, barely six months after the Lashkar carried out the Mumbai terror attacks, which makes it clear the group did not plan any breaks in its terrorist missions in India.

Sources have also said the group of three terrorists which hatched the plot to eliminate Modi used only coded names. They were not among the known operatives.

The cable identifies a Pakistani Lashkar member Shafiq Khafa as the mastermind of the plot that was to be executed by a module led by an Indian Lashkar operative, Hussein.

The hit job was to be carried out by one Sameer, an India-based Lashkar terrorist.

Andrew Buncombe: Undecided – the politician critics saw as a rabble-rouser

Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat, is perhaps the most controversial politician in India. He is also one of the most successful.

In the aftermath of the 2002 violence that swept through his state, the chief minister campaigned for re-election, promoting himself as a politician who would protect Gujarat against the threat of "terrorists". He was subsequently returned and when, in 2007, he went to the polls for the third time, he was similarly successful.

Given his success, there were many within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who believed he had the ability to become a national leader. But his largely ineffectual performance as a national campaigner in the 2009 general election suggested that his appeal was not universal. At the same time, within Gujarat, where he has promoted good governance and anti-corruption measures, he remains popular and has received the backing of leading businessmen such as Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani.

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Mr Ambani, head of Reliance Industries, praised his "visionary, effective and passionate leadership". Mr Modi's critics accuse him of arrogance and authoritarianism. He almost never grants interviews to the media.

It remains to be seen whether Mr Modi will escape the fallout of the special investigations, though he has repeatedly said he is innocent of all allegations directed at him.

One of the incidents being investigated is the killing of up to 70 Muslims in a housing complex in Ahmedabad called the Gulbarg Society. People had taken shelter in the home of former MP, Ehsan Jafri, and as a Hindu mob surrounded the house, the politician is said to have called Mr Modi and directly asked him for help. Last year, an eyewitness to the incident, Imtiyaz Pathan, told The Independent that after Mr Jafri put down the phone he said that Mr Modi had told him there would be "no deployment of police" to save the besieged Muslims.

Mr Jafri was among those who were hacked to death and set on fire. His body has never been found.

Hindu nationalists 'win' Gujarat poll

Hindu nationalists 'win' Gujarat पोल

Controversial Hindu nationalist party leader Narendra Modi swept back to power in India's religiously divided Gujarat state on Sunday in what was called a national victory over the rival Congress party. The Congress loss in the Hindu nationalist bastion, though widely expected, was its fourth setback in regional polls this year.