A Response to NYtimes Latest Anti-India Article

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A Response to NYtimes Latest Anti-India Article

Dear Editor,

Amy Waldman's article is interesting in its use of innuendo and

terminology. She highlights the anguish over the burning of a dead

body and belittles the horror of the burning alive of 59 people.

With hundreds of riot victims lying dead in the heat, an overall

breakdown of law and order and a lack of refrigerated morgues, it

was obviously a public health issue that prompted the burning of the

dead. To portray it as a callous display of bigotry is unjust and

only fans the flames of rage. Facts show that the authorities were

overwhelmed by events.

It was strange to use the word immolation, a term meaning ritual

sacrifice, used to describe the burning alive of nearly 50 women and

children. With this logic, Waldman should have used the words

involuntary group sexual encounters instead of gang rape,

depopulation efforts instead of murder, knife functionality tests

instead of hacking and pain tolerance experiments rather than

torture.

To highlight the anguish over the burning of a corpse and trivialize

the burning alive of 59 people is not journalism. It's a shameful

abuse of a horrific tragedy for political purposes.

Sincerely,

Brannon Parker

 

 

By AMY WALDMAN

 

Published: October 17, 2004

 

KALOL, India - So indecent was his younger brother's death that

Idris Yusuf Ghodawala never imagined the indignity that was to

follow.

 

On March 1, 2002, as Hindu-Muslim riots convulsed the state of

Gujarat, a Hindu mob armed with shiny new swords set upon Imran

Ghodawala, an 18-year-old Muslim, dragged him into the Rabbani

mosque and burned him to death. Idris, hiding on a balcony next

door, saw the attack and then the smoke billowing from the mosque.

 

When Idris Ghodawala went to the police to claim Imran's remains, he

said the top local police officer, a Hindu named R. J. Patil, told

him there were no remains to claim. Mr. Patil had burned them,

knowing full well that Muslims, unlike Hindus, bury their dead.

 

The sacrilege still makes Mr. Ghodawala, 31, weep.

 

"We are Muslims, and they burned our body," he said.

 

Mr. Patil's action appears to have been part of a broader effort to

conceal evidence and thwart prosecutions after the riots in Gujarat

state, which left at least 1,100 Muslims dead and up to 600 missing.

Mr. Ghodawala could name four members of the mob that killed his

brother, two of whom he had played cricket with as a child. But he

said Mr. Patil refused to let him name names, or even file a

complaint. So Mr. Ghodawala's case essentially disappeared, as did

thousands of others stemming from the riots.

 

In a state controlled by Hindu nationalists, the police either

refused to register the names of the accused or simply summarily

closed cases; prosecutors did not oppose bail for suspects, and

judges delivered acquittals in cases where dozens of people died.

 

Only a small number of Hindus have been convicted for any action in

the riots, although the Supreme Court has now intervened to force

more than 2,000 cases that had been closed to be re-examined and at

least two retried.

 

What happened in this area was typical except in one respect. Late

last year, Neeraja Gotru Rao, a policewoman of uncommon courage,

arrived here after being sent by the state police to reinvestigate

the cases. Her work led to the arrests of about 30 suspects,

including the personal assistant to a state government minister. It

also led to the arrest of Mr. Patil on suspicion of destroying

evidence by burning the remains of Imran Ghodawala and at least 12

other Muslims.

 

The fate of these two police officers, whose interpretation of duty

so diverged, will test more than whether justice will be done in the

riots, which were set off by the immolation on Feb. 27, 2002, of 59

Hindus in a train carriage. It may also determine whether Muslims

here can once again believe in the impartiality of the Indian state.

 

On a recent afternoon, the corpulent Mr. Patil was found not in

jail, but sipping tea in his pajamas in the local government

hospital. The minister's personal assistant and another well-

connected accused person - all three ostensibly under arrest - were

with him. Pleading illness, they were seeking bail from the comfort

of the hospital.

 

Ms. Rao, meanwhile, was back in Ahmedabad, having been ordered by

the Gujarat state police to wrap up her unfinished work. She is not

granting interviews, but victims and their advocates say the order

is another effort to thwart prosecutions.

 

"She was removed because she was doing good work," Mr. Ghodawala

said. "And because she said she would try to find out who were the

superior officers who gave the orders. Now I don't think anybody

will take up this case." The director general of the Gujarat police

says Ms. Rao, who is Hindu, was taking too long with her work, and

that her investigation was finished.

 

The rioting lasted for weeks, but was most ferocious in the first

few days. Sixty-eight Muslims died in this area, many of them from

Delol, a village nearby.

 

Muslims died in the village and the surrounding fields, where Yaqub

Adam, a tailor, saw his father, mother, uncle, cousin, nephew and

two other relatives killed.

 

"Their only work in those days was to find the Muslims, kill them

and burn them," Mr. Adam, 40, said.

 

Eleven more Muslims died next to the Ambika Society housing colony,

when the truck in which they were trying to flee ran straight into a

Hindu mob.

 

"Nobody came to save us," said Medina Yaqub Sheikh, who said she saw

her husband hacked by a sword, then set on fire. One young woman

said she was raped by five men.

 

More Muslims died at Derol station, and 17 more fleeing rioters at

the Goma River. Two small boys were reportedly thrown on a fire,

then when they crawled off, thrown on again. In Kalol, where about

one-fourth of the 20,000 residents are Muslim, 165 Muslim properties

and vehicles were looted and burned. One Muslim man, injured in the

police firing, was burned to death in the hospital compound. Imran

Ghodawala was burned to death in the mosque.

 

If each killing had its horrific particularity, the aftermath was

strikingly similar. Victims and witnesses went to the local police

station, controlled by Mr. Patil, to register complaints and claim

their dead.

 

Survivors said Mr. Patil refused to let them file complaints, saying

he would write what needed to be written. In the end, he wrote a

single complaint bunching all the killings together and not listing

the suspects whom witnesses had named. Survivors of the Ambika

Society massacre said he told them that he had burned the remains of

their loved ones.

 

When Mr. Ghodawala sought a certificate proving his brother's death

so his family could get compensation from the state, he said the

police told him that if he named names his family would get no

money.

 

He would see his brother's killers in town, but was powerless, he

said, tears flowing again. "If we chase them we cannot live here, we

cannot work here," he said. "We do not have anybody to help."

 

That changed when Ms. Rao arrived at the end of last year. The state

police had dispatched her to investigate the killings and rape at

the Ambika Society after pressure from human rights and women's

groups and the Supreme Court.

 

She set up shop in a separate room at the Kalol police station, and

victims began coming to see her. They found a woman, about 35, in a

police uniform, with short hair, small glasses, a strong build and a

soft voice.

 

She listened with compassion, and spoke with affection. Medina Yaqub

Sheikh is illiterate, but as she recounted how her husband died, she

knew it mattered that Ms. Rao took notes.

 

"Earlier when we used to talk to the police they never used to

write," Ms. Sheikh said.

 

As word spread about Ms. Rao, more victims began visiting her. Idris

Ghodawala told her of his brother's killing. She visited the scene,

photographing the spot, still preserved in the mosque, where his

brother had burned.

 

"She used to encourage us: 'Don't be afraid of anybody,' " Mr.

Ghodawala said.

 

Yaqub Adam told her of his family's deaths. "No one knew about this

case because it was never reported," he said. "Because of R. J.

Patil, nothing came on the surface."

 

Ms. Rao worked as late as midnight and avoided talking to witnesses

in front of the local police, bringing her own staff to write

affidavits.

 

"She wanted that whatever injustice happened to us, at the end of

the day we should get justice," said the young woman who had been

gang-raped.

 

Local Hindus looked on her less favorably. "Neeraja Rao used to call

people and they would be sitting all day in her office," huffed

Tushat Patel, a town official. "She was very tough."

 

By the time she was taken off the investigation, 22 Delol men had

been arrested. So had at least three of the four men Idris Ghodawala

had named in his brother's killing, although they are free on bail.

 

One of them, Ajay Soni, a lecturer and member of the Association of

National Volunteers, India's most powerful Hindu nationalist

organization, called the charge fabricated. "This is all political,"

he said. "The minority cannot rule this country. This will not go

any further."

 

Mr. Patil denied any wrongdoing as well. "All the senior officers

knew what was the situation at the time," he said from his hospital

bed.

 

For now, whether he was a renegade or following orders from

superiors will remain unanswered since Ms. Rao is no longer here to

pursue it.

 

Not a single Muslim has returned to live in Delol. Instead, they

live in a ready-made ghetto, a colony built for them on the edge of

Kalol by an Islamic relief organization. The houses are filled with

widows and absence.

 

The young woman who said she was raped said she also lost her

father, brother and husband - every male member of her household.

She said she is still too fearful to go to town on her own, where

her rapists wander free on bail.

 

She and the other victims want Ms. Rao back. "We had complete

confidence in her, and we were getting justice through her," said

Ms. Sheikh. "Now we are not sure."

 

In trusting Ms. Rao, the victims went out on a limb. Now, they say,

it has been snapped beneath them.

 

Idris Ghodawala said he again sees no hope for justice, and he feels

more threatened than ever. When he crosses paths with those who were

arrested in the killing of his brother, he said, "It is I who try to

hide, not them."

 

 

For the Record - Oct. 18, 2004

 

An article yesterday about an effort by Muslims in the Indian state

of Gujarat to obtain justice after riots against them in March 2002

gave an incorrect name in some copies for a policewoman whose work

led to arrests in the case. She is Neeraja Gotru Rao; her surname is

Rao.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/international/asia/17india.html?

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