In The Name Of Allah, The Most Beneficent And Merciful

June 1^st, 2002

Headlines:

· Guj govt flays NHRC for stinging report (Times Of India)

· Dalmia smells govt plot to weaken VHP (The Telegraph)

· Gujarat slur on Police (The Telegraph)

· Ahmedabad police suspect saffron hand behind blasts (Hindustan Times)

· Two dead in fresh religious clashes in India (Yahoo News)

NEWS HEADLINES

Guj govt flays NHRC for stinging report
TIMES NEWS NETWORK

[SUNDAY, JUNE 02, 2002 2:02:22 AM ]

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=11708364

GANDHINAGAR: The Gujarat government has sharply criticised the
National Human Rights Commission for failing to respect "the
sentiments of five crore people of Gujarat" while coming up with its
critical remarks against the officialdom's all-round failure in
handling the recent communal riots.

Refusing to accept any of the NHRC proposals, the government in a
statement said, "The NHRC should have known that investigating
authorities have no powers to release the accused on bail. Only
courts have."

The NHRC had mentioned that the percentage of Hindus released on bail
was much higher than that of Muslims.

The statement insists, "Yet, it is a fact that in a large number of
cases, the investigating authorities strongly opposed any application
for releasing the accused on bail. Whether it is Ahmedabad's Naroda-
Patia or Gulbarg Society cases, or it is Vadodara's Best Bakery case,
not one person has been granted bail."

Repeating statistics on steps towards controlling communal riots, the
statement says, "The steps taken by the state police have no
precedence in free India. The police fired 10,295 rounds of bullets
and 14,838 teargas shells. It led to the death of 199 persons and
injuries to 402. The police made 31,090 preventive arrests and 18,317
arrests under different sections. As many as 4,120 offences have been
registered."

This apart, the "police carried out combing in sensitive areas and
took arms and ammunition into custody."

Thanks to these steps, the statement says, "the law and order
situation is now normal and for the last three weeks there have been
no major untoward incidents."

Referring to the ouster of Ahmedabad police commissioner PC Pande on
supercop KPS Gill's recommendation, it underlines, "Necessary changes
were made in the police administration to make its working more
effective."

Copyright © 2002 Times Internet Limited. All rights reserved.

DALMIA SMELLS GOVT PLOT TO WEAKEN VHP
FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
The Telegraph,
New Delhi, May 31.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/archive/1020601/index.htm

The Vishwa Hindu Parishad today lashed out at the
Vajpayee government, accusing it of hatching a plot to
weaken the hardline Hindu organisation.

The outburst came a day after it suffered a public
censure by Baba Dharamdas of the Ramjanmabhoomi Nyas.
“A government agency could be financing Dharamdas to
weaken the VHP,” claimed VHP president Vishnu Hari
Dalmia. “The government wants to make us weak.”

Contending that the Centre has a stake in undermining
the VHP’s stature, Dalmia said: “The government would
have behaved otherwise were it in a majority.” He
stated two possible reasons for Dharamdas’s
accusations — either he was instigated by the
government or is under the “influence of a tantrik”.

At a news conference yesterday, Dharamdas levelled
various charges against the VHP, ranging from bungling
the Trust’s finances to pitting Hindus and Muslims
against each other. He even went to the extent of
saying that the people of Ayodhya, and not outsiders,
should settle the Ram temple controversy.

As for the VHP’s plans of performing purnahuti on June
2, he alleged it was a camouflage for collecting funds
for “political purposes”, besides renewing tension
between Hindus and Muslims.

In retaliation, Dalmia hit back saying: “Dharamdas has
no locus standi in the Trust to make any charges
against us. He is not even a member of the
Ramjanmabhoomi Trust. He is only a permanent invitee.”
Dharamdas heads the Vishwa Dharma Paksha Parishad — an
organisation floated by him to bring together people
of diverse faiths.

Dalmia made no secret of his disaffection with the
Vajpayee government for not implementing certain steps
that would facilitate the majority community. “They
could have banned cow slaughter and cleaned up the
Ganga. They should know what kind of significance the
Ganga has in the Hindu psyche,” said Dalmia.

He also blamed the Centre for not petitioning the
court earlier to have daily hearings on the
Ramjanmabhoomi dispute. “We are hopeful of a verdict
by the end of this year or early next year. If the
government had petitioned the court earlier for daily
hearings we could have reached a verdict much
earlier,” said Dalmia.

The recent bickering between the VHP and the NDA over
performing puja at the disputed site in Ayodhya caused
a rift between the two. Now, by dragging the Centre
into its row with Dharamdas, the VHP has made it clear
that it is still not in a forgiving mood.

Of the few ministers in the VHP’s good books, human
resource development minister Murli Manohar Joshi
occupies top slot.

“Joshi has done a lot in his area by rectifying the
errors of the Communists in education,” pointed out
Dalmia

GUJARAT SLUR ON POLICE
The Telegraph,
FROM BASANT RAWAT
Ahmedabad, May 31.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/archive/1020601/index.htm

Security adviser K.P.S. Gill today received the first
complaint against police, who have been accused of
damaging a mosque and 30 houses in Baroda late on
Thursday night.

In the complaint, the first of its kind after a
special cell was set up in Ahmedabad to address
instances of police atrocities, residents of Baroda’s
Memon colony alleged that police personnel forcibly
entered Madani Masjid and destroyed property, creating
tension in the area.

Baroda police commissioner D.D. Tuleja, who initially
refused to acknowledge the incident, ordered an
enquiry after the minority community offered Friday
prayers on the road outside the mosque as a mark of
protest.

According to Babu Shaikh, a resident of the colony,
trouble started when a mob from Govindrao Society set
fire to a local shop owned by a minority community
member.

When the police arrived, they did nothing to control
the situation, and instead entered the mosque on the
pretext of launching a search operation and started
pelting stones, said Shaikh. The mob, further incited,
meanwhile proceeded to damage vehicles parked in the
neighbourhood, all along shouting obscenities and
provocative slogans.

Thursday night’s violence is apparently a culmination
of tension building up over the past several days
following eviction of residents from illegal shanties
in the Bamanpura area under Panigate police station.
Members of the majority community were reportedly
incensed with the civic authorities for razing a
temple along with their homes.

Tension flared on Wednesday night when the police
tried to evict the minority community also from the
area but faced stiff resistance and was forced to open
fire.

The area was eventually put under curfew after a
person was stabbed on the street. Yesterday, curfew
was lifted but the situation is far from normal.

NHRC slams Modi
The National Human Rights Commission today charged the
Narendra Modi government in Gujarat with
“comprehensive failure” to check communal violence in
the state and persistent violation of the rights to
life and liberty of the people, reports PTI.

The commission, in its final report released in New
Delhi, also expressed displeasure over the Gujarat
government’s lack of response to the confidential
report of the NHRC team that visited to the state.

`Ahmedabad police suspect saffron hand behind blasts`

Hindustan Times,

June 01, 2002.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/010602/detNAT24.asp

Late Thursday night, the Ahmedabad police announced a
reward of Rs 50,000 to anyone providing a clue that
leads to the arrest of the culprits responsible for
Wednesday's blasts in three buses here.
The move indicates the city police's indirect
admission of its inability to trace the criminals who
had planted the crude bombs in the buses.

But top police officers, on condition of anonymity,
said the fact that the police have not conducted raids
or combing operations in any Muslim ghettos even 48
hours after the blasts proves that the community was
not behind the mischief this time.

"Even if there was an iota of suspicion on minorities
having done it, by now the city police would have
ransacked many minority areas and picked up some
Muslim youths", a senior IPS officer said.

Since the blasts were intended just to create panic
and not to kill, they were obviously masterminded by
elements interested in keeping tension alive, a senior
officer said, hinting that pro-Hindutwa groups might
have been behind the Wednesday's incidents in the city
buses.

An IPS officer said the timing of the blasts, which
occurred just a day after three VHP and Bajrang Dal
activists were arrested for the Naroda Patiya
massacre, indicated that they were linked.

Meanwhile, the city police have stepped up its
surveillance at all public places.

Two dead in fresh religious clashes in India
Thu May 30, 3:35 AM ET

Yahoo News.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=838&ncid=731&e=3&u=/nm/20020530/\
wl_asia_nm/asia_107630_1

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters) - Two people were killed and 12 wounded in
overnight Hindu-Muslim clashes in India's riot-racked western state
of Gujarat, police said on Thursday.

The violence followed three bomb explosions on buses earlier in the
day in Ahmedabad (news - web sites), Gujarat's largest city, in which
11 people were injured.

Police said a Muslim bus conductor was burnt alive by a Hindu mob of
about 1,500 in Kadi, southwest of Ahmedabad, after a Hindu man was
killed in a bomb blast there.

They said 12 people, including four policemen, were injured in the
industrial city of Baroda, south of Ahmedabad, on Wednesday night.

Almost a thousand people, mostly Muslims, have died in Gujarat in
some of India's worst religious violence since independence in 1947.

It erupted in late February after a Muslim mob torched a train,
burning alive 59 Hindus, over a long-running dispute on ownership of
a holy site.

Non-government groups and opposition parties, however, say more than
2,500 people have been killed.

A senior state police official said an indefinite curfew was imposed
in Kadi to prevent further clashes.

A Baroda police official said the city was peaceful on Thursday
morning.

The latest violence in Gujarat, which plunged India's Hindu
nationalist-led federal coalition into political crisis, comes at a
time when India is on edge because of tension with Pakistan over what
New Delhi says is Islamabad's support to Muslim militants in the
disputed Kashmir (news - web sites) region.

No responsibility was claimed for the crude bomb explosions on the
buses in Hindu areas of Ahmedabad on Wednesday, but authorities have
previously expressed fear some Muslims -- enraged by the Hindu
reprisals against Muslims -- could be enlisted by Islamic extremists
to trigger a backlash.

Critics allege the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which heads the
federal coalition and rules Gujarat, failed to prevent the Hindu
reprisals and turned a blind eye to the killing of Muslims.

BJP leaders, who are accused of a bias against India's minority
Muslims, have denied the charges and say they stopped widespread
rioting within the first three days.

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