Modi and Godhra – The Fiction of Fact Finding

No instance of communal violence has provoked as much controversy as the Gujarat2002 carnage, in which over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed. And none has been subjected to as much fact-finding. Yet, as this book demonstrates, the fact-finding — riddled with ambiguities and deceptions, gaps and contradictions — glossed over crucial pieces of evidence. While the Nanavati Commission shirked from examining Modi, the specialinvestigation team (SIT) left unasked a range of questions on the anti-Muslim violence that followed the burning of a train in Godhra carrying Hindutva activists. How could Modi, for instance, claim to have been unaware, for nearly five hours, of the first post-Godhra massacre that took place at Ahmedabad’s Gulberg Society? How does this claim square with his admission that he was tracking the violence as it unfolded? Scrupulously researched and now updated to factor in the national elections of 2014, The Fiction of Fact-finding draws telling parallels between Gujarat 2002 and the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in Delhi to underline an insidious pattern in Indian democracy: the subversion of the criminal justice system under a shroud of legal platitudes.