Uday Mahurkar

"Rioting did not start in the morning of February 28. Hindus started with pelting of stones on Muslim houses in Naroda Patia area. Muslims also retaliated with stones. Between 10.30 and 11.00 a.m., an auto driver named Ranjeet Vanjara was parked near a masjid in Naroda Patiya. A group of Muslims dragged him into the gali near their masjid. On seeing this, Hindus began shouting for help. Police came within 20 minutes. When they went in the gali, they found the dead body of Vanzara outside the mosque. His eyes had been gouged. This inflamed the Hindus and they went on a rampage. This case has also been registered in court but no action has taken place over it. No one is giving this case its due attention because it is a case of Hindu killing. The second incident took place around 11 a.m. A Muslim owner of an Eicher truck was surrounded by a Hindu mob. In panic, he mowed down the crowd. One person was crushed to death. This too enraged the mob and they went on a rampage. In the third incident in Naroda Gam, a group of Muslims murdered a Hindu cyclist. Thus, the first three persons to be killed in mob violence on February 28 were Hindus. Therefore, the theory that the post-Godhra riots of 2002 were part of a well-crafted BJP conspiracy is all bunkum. Nor were they as one-sided as they came to be projected."

"I was a personal witness to the following incident. On 3 rd or 4 th of March, I entered Shah Alam dargah, which had been converted into a refugee camp. Baldeep Singh photographer was with me. On one side of the dargah there is a big room where one lady named Belim was briefing the press and giving highly exaggerated accounts of what had happened. She was crying hysterically in front of journalists. As soon as the media persons moved away, she instantly stopped howling. This made it obvious that it was all a play-act. On the other side of the partition, there was a squint-eyed man from Karnataka. A lady was sitting with him with a tape recorder tutoring this Muslim from Karnataka to say, “I am so angry at the riots that I am going to become a terrorist.” Teesta has a real perverse streak in her. She had started tutoring witnesses from the start as though she was just waiting for this riot to break out."

"...Hindus too have begun to suffer, thanks to a new belligerence of the Muslims who have been under siege for ten weeks. The repeated recovery of huge caches of weapons from Muslim pockets forced some of the ministers to ask Modi about the steps the police was taking to flush out these armouries. What is adding to the knife-edge tension is the growing evidence that the violence has a deliberate pattern and there’s a motive to keep the flames from being doused. Violence seemed to have been brought under control by the second week of March until sporadic attacks on Hindus in Ahmedabad, Bharuch, and Modasa in the midst of the state school board examinations reignited the embers. But it escalated on Ram Navmi day when a police constable was killed in Ahmedabad’s Gomtipur area. The sudden spurt of violence followed a call given by local Muslim leaders to students from the community to boycott the rescheduled state school board examinations failed. Significantly, among those who were exhorting the students to boycott the exams were five local Congress leaders besides members of the radical Islamic movement, the Tableeghi Jamaat. Local BJP leaders point to other incidents to suggest there was a method in the mayhem. Hours after Defence Minister George Fernandes led a peace march in Ahmedabad violence broke out on the route he had taken. The area had not witnessed any riots in the recent past. Strangely, the rioting stopped a day before Sonia Gandhi’s peace rally in Ahmedabad on May 1. But, on May 5, a day before the Rajya Sabha debated the censure motion, and barely 24 hours after Gill took over his Gujarat assignment, violence erupted again. This time Muslim rioters attacked Bhilwas locality in the Shah Alam area. Says political analyst Vidyut Thakar, “A pattern is visible in the new round of violence. There is an impression that it has to do with the Modi-hatao campaign...”"