Ahmedabad, September 18: Even as the Nanavati commission probing the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat remains undecided on summoning chief minister Narendra Modi for questioning him about his role, a senior police officer has set the record straight by making startling revelations about the goings-on during the Hindu-Muslim clashes.
Rahul Sharma, an Indian Police Service officer who was deputy commissioner of police (control room) then, has told a special fast-track court hearing the sensational Gulberg Society massacre case that the compact discs (CDs) submitted by him to the commission and other investigators contain genuine records of mobile phone calls made to the chief minister’s office during the communal riots, and are authentic.
The 1992-batch officer, now sidelined as DIG of the police armed unit in Rajkot and in-charge commander of the marine task force, also created a flutter by revealing that the then Ahmedabad police commissioner P C Pande had reached the Muslim colony under attack by Hindu rioters very late in the day.
Not only this, Sharma also raised many eyebrows when he said during his deposition that he had opposed his seniors’ decision to show bloody killings in riots in another Ahmedabad suburb as a truck accident.
Sharma had during his duty gathered call details from two private service providers as part of evidence in the investigations into the three worst cases—Naroda Patia, Naroda Gaam, and Gulbarg Society—where he was assisting in the probe.
The CD provided by Sharma containing sensitive call details has been one of the most debatable issues related to the 2002 riots in absence of the original CDs which he handed over to the city crime branch. This data has put the state government in an embarrassing situation on many occasions, and was responsible for the arrest of the only woman minister in the Modi government.
Sharma had given the CDs to the commission and the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) but the state government has questioned their authenticity, maintaining that the data recorded is not original.
The techno-savvy police officer, a Kanpur IIT engineer, also said that the then police commissioner Pande did not visit the Meghaninagar police station area till 7 pm on February 28, 2002.
Pande has been accused of neglecting frantic calls for security made by former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, when rioters mobbed the Gulbarg colony in Meghaninagar on the morning of February 28 when the Vishwa Hindu Parishad had called for a statewide shutdown that triggered riots all over Gujarat, claiming 1,500 lives, most of them Muslims.
Sharma also said the chargesheet had mentioned that the riot in Naroda Patiya broke out after a truck ran over some people in the area. He then told Pande that he disagreed with the cause behind the riots and suggested it required investigation.
Investigating officers in the case, S H Chudasama and ACP (crime) D G Vanzara, an accused in the Sohrbuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, were also present at the meeting, he said, adding that they did not agree with his view that the reason behind the riots needed to be probed.
-Agencies