Nanavati Commission gives clean chit to PM Modi in 2002 Gujarat Riots
২০০২’র গুজরাট দাঙ্গায় প্রধানমন্ত্রী মোদিকে ক্লিনচিট দিল নানাবতী কমিশন

December 11: In a significant move, the Gujarat government on Wednesday submitted the report of the Nanavati Commission in the state assembly which gave clean chit to then Gujarat chief minister and now prime minister Narendra Modi and his cabinet colleagues in the 2002 communal riots.

“There is no evidence to show that these attacks were either inspired or instigated or abated by any minister of the state,” the commission said in its report, which runs into over 1,500 pages and is compiled in nine volumes. The commission’s final report was tabled in the Gujarat Assembly today, five years after it was submitted to then state chief minister Anandiben Patel. Minister of State for Home Pradeepsinh Jadeja tabled the report in the House on Wednesday.

The Commission blamed the police for failing to control the mobs in some places either due to inadequate numbers, or because they were not properly armed.The report, however, raised a finger of suspicion over role of two Indian Police Service (IPS) officers IPS officers RB Sreekumar and Rahul Sharma (both retired) in the riots. It also said that suspended IPS officer Sanjeev Bhatt should also be investigated for his role in spreading of the communal riots.

Former Supreme Court Justice GT Nanavati (retired) and ex-Gujarat High Court Justice Akshay Mehta (retired) had in 2014 submitted their final report on the 2002 riots – in which over 1,000 people, mainly of the minority community, were killed. The commission was appointed in 2002 by the then state chief minister Narendra Modi to probe the riots, that took place after the burning of two coaches of the Sabarmati Express train near Godhra railway station, in which 59 ‘karsevaks’ were killed.