Post-Godhra caricatures

For reasons altogether distantly connected, during a certain point of time in 2007, people suddenly became aware of what happened in 2002. Gory incidents of unimaginable precedence (burnings, rapes of pregnant women, mass graves,etc) were attributed to a certain group they called 'hindu-fundamentalists'.

Lets see what they were supposed to have done:

1) The poster-boy of Post-Godhra riots, Qutubuddin Ansar, the young tailor of Ahmedabad was literally the poster boy for all ‘secular’ newspapers and journals. His bruised face and folded hands still haunt our memory.

2) And then of course, there was the pregnant woman named Kausar Banu who was gangraped by a mob and then whose foetus was gouged out by sharp weapons.

3) The dumping of dead bodies into a well by rioteers at Naroda Patiya

4) Police botching up investigation into the killing of British nationals, who were on a visit to Gujarat and unfortunately got caught in the riots.

5) Zarina Mansuri, a 30-year-old Muslim woman who was brutally hacked to death and later burnt to ashes by a mob in the Naroda Patiya massacre of February 28, 2002.

6) The rape of one Shabana (15), which Anisha, her friend is said to have witnessed.

7) And finally, Zahira Sheikh, the key witness in Best Bakery case in which 12 Muslims and 2 others were burnt alive in the premises of the bakery by Hindus.


Now lets see what happened with all these characters actually:

1) ‘Secularists’ sent Mr. Ansar to Kolkata and made a big issue of migration. Within few weeks, he came back to Ahmedabad, his home, and nobody has reported as to why he chose to resettle in Ahmedabad if it was ‘unsafe for Muslims’.

2) A Special Investigative Team (SIT) formed on the orders of Hon'ble Chief Justice of India found no truth in this matter. In fact the SIT observed “It is clear from the report that the horrendous allegations made by the NGO [Citizens for Peace and Justice] were false. Cyclostyled affidavits were supplied by a social activist and the allegations made in them were untrue…"

3) same as above.

4) same as above.

5) The woman Zarina Mansuri was not even alive at the time of riots. She had died of tuberculosis (TB) some four months earlier.

6) Yunus’s deposition said: “This, again, is wrong. Anisha had witnessed nothing like that that day. "We, along with several others, were hiding on the same terrace of a house in Gangotarinagar at that time and none of us had seen anything like that.”

7) Well, Ms. Z.Shaikh not only turned hostile (she was charged with lying to the court and was served a 1 year sentence), she actually asked the court to look into the bank transactions of a very very interesting woman.

Now, I must reveal an important player in the game, someone connected to all the above incidents in some form or other-- Teesta Setalvad. She heads an NGO called Citizens for Peace and Justice and she is the wife of some 'Javed Anand' (Ahem!).

And now I must direct the readers to Sandeep's blog just to illustrate the magnitude of that woman's treachery to the nation:
"...Teesta was the only person that went after Narendra Modi with singleminded determination almost every single day for at least 3 years. A measure of success of her brazen activism is the Supreme Court’s premature pronouncement of Modi as the “modern day Nero.” The SIT report clearly shows some of the dubious and outright illegal methods she followed in her quest for “justice” (sic):

• Tutoring witnesses
• Filing false affidavits
• Lying openly
• Manufacturing tales of incidents that didn’t actually occur
• Threatening witnesses and aides who didn’t “obey” her

In other words, she didn’t have a case. But she got away with it for some time not because she was good at it but because she was hysterically vocal about it, and assumed that those who were with her were as ethically decrepit as she was.

However, Teesta’s spurious activism has done significant damage: it spawned off an entire cottage industry built on the edifice of falsehood. This cottage industry was awash with tons of funds because it was able to convince idiots abroad that the “fight for justice” was genuine. On the more dangerous side, some of these were well-intentioned idiots but others were active traitors. Gujarat was the perfect opportunity. Also, her sisters-in-crime like Arundhati Roy spun kilometres of yarn based on the Ripped Foetus Theory postulated by Teesta. Indeed, the theory holds a mirror to Teesta’s macabre imagination: I mean, she could’ve simply said: Kausar Banu’s head was severed or some such thing. But Teesta’s sadisitic mental imagery stretches it to: Kausar Banu was gangraped by a mob, who then gouged out the foetus with sharp weapons. No, don’t try to visualize that. Writing it was horrible enough for me."

Enough said. The case is closed. But then again, as Yoda might say,"Cure who can, the disease called Skepticism?"

Update-1: For all those misty-eyed post-modern humanists groping for a ray of hope to hang on to in this lost battle against Hindu Fundamentalism, the most dangerous threat in the universe, here is a rebuttal by the NGO Citizens of Peace and Justice.

Update-2: Happiness is ephimeral (or I can actually say, Satyameva Jayate). The original report is actually, true.