Gujarat Officials Ordered "Eliminating" Muslims: Officer

AHMEDABAD, April 15 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A top Indian police official has told a tribunal that the government in Gujarat ordered him to "eliminate persons" belonging to the Muslim community during riots three years ago, press reports said on Friday, April 15.

R.B. Sreekumar served as intelligence chief of western Gujarat state during 2002 riots in which about 2,000 people -- mainly Muslims -- were killed. Human rights groups say many more were killed.

Sreekumar said he received directives from Modi and his government colleagues to tap telephones and "eliminate persons belonging to the minority community", according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The police officer made the allegations in a written submission to India's Central Administrative Tribunal which investigates complaints by civil servants.

Gujarat state home minister Amit Shah has denied the officer's claims as "baseless" and said they were leveled by Sreekumar because he was bitter that he had been passed over for promotion.

But Modi has been accused by opposition and human rights groups at home and abroad of doing little to stop the bloody riots.

The Indian Supreme Court also slammed him and his government, run then by the country's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, for turning a blind eye to the carnage at the time.

In March, the United States revoked a visa for Modi, citing legislation which makes any foreign government official who was responsible for "severe violations of religious freedom, ineligible for a visa."

Phone Tapping

Sreekumar said a senior civil servant, G. Subba Rao, had told him to "eliminate" any person trying to disrupt a Hindu religious event in the state.

"He (Rao) added that this is the well-considered decision of Chief Minister Narendra Modi," Sreekumar wrote.

He said he was also directed to "to tap the telephone of a very senior leader of the opposition Congress party".

Sreekumar said he was transferred to a relatively obscure position after he did not comply with the directions of Rao to present a picture of normalcy in the state to India's election chief during a visit.

"When all officers came out of the Conference Hall, Rao called me and shouted: 'You let us down very badly. What was the need for you to project all those statistics about displaced persons'?"

He was referring to the thousands of Muslims who ended up in camps after they fled rampaging mobs who attacked their communities.

Sreekumar said officials of Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were keen to project normalcy to ensure state elections were not delayed and they could cash in on the wave of Hindu sentiment generated by the riots.

Sreekumar also said that senior government officials sent messages asking him to kill Muslim extremists who were involved in rioting.

"Illegal"

Further in the notes he kept at the time while serving as Gujarat's intelligence chief in May 2002, Sreekumar wrote that Narendra Modi ordered him to focus on suspected Muslim militants as hardline Hindu activists are "not doing anything illegal".

He also alleges in his petition that state government lawyers tried to "tutor him" before he submitted his deposition to the commission.

Sreekumar's lawyer Anand Yagnik told the BBC that the tribunal had issued notices to Mr Modi and other government officials requesting them to reply by 9 May to the allegations.

The 2002 riots were triggered after claims that a Muslim mob torched a train carrying Hindus at Godhra, killing 59 people.

A subsequent official report said the train fire was an accident.