Yeh andar ki bat haiPolice hamarey saath hai(This is inside information, the police are with us).
In Ahmedabad... one official recalled how for the last few months, there hadbeen concerted attempts to get lists of Muslim business establishments from the Ahmedabad municipalcorporation.... VHP volunteers have also been making the rounds of professional institutions and universities,seeking the names and addresses of Muslim students. Some government sources say VHP members have drawn uplists of government departments (for example, the Food Corporation of India) and their allied agencies, andidentified "undesirables" and their addresses.70
If VHP-BJP leaders led mobs from the front along with the police, they alsotook control of the institutional apparatus. Health Minister Ashok Bhatt sat in the Police Control Room inAhmedabad through the first two days of violence. Given his portfolio, it was an odd place to be but not givenhis past. Bhatt, along with Union Minister of State for Defence Harin Pathak, faces charges of having inciteda mob that murdered a police constable in the course of communal violence on April 25, 1985. According toseveral eyewitnesses, another State Minister, Harin Pandya, moved through the Paldi area, speaking to leadersof mobs that were burning Muslim homes and shops. [State Home Minister Gordhan] Jhadaphia, who ought to havebeen in the control room after the violence broke out on February 28, was busy telling reporters that he"did not expect Hindus to retaliate."76
Most incidents happened at the same time. It was definitely pre-planned. Manywere around 10:30 a.m. The role of the police was also very clear. When I interviewed victims, they said thatprior to the attacks mass meetings were taking place that were being addressed by local VHP and Bajrang Dalleaders. A rumor was already going around that something was going to happen, long before the Godhra incident.
From the areas represented in this camp, twenty-five people were hit in policeand private firings. Sixteen died, the rest are in hospitals.... There are still burnings going on.... If theykeep dividing people then people will keep losing faith in this state. They need to put a brake on it. If thestate does not want to stop it then it will keep happening. Everyone will tell you that the police came first,fired and then the private attackers came.88
On the 28th afternoon at 3 p.m. my younger brother was returningfrom work. The police said that a curfew was in place. A crowd gathered to attack. The police was leading thecrowd. They were looting and the people followed, looting and burning behind them. The crowd was shouting,"Go to Pakistan. If you want to stay here become Hindu." The police very clearly aimed at my brotherand fired at him. He was twenty-three years old. At 6 p.m., three hours later, we were able to get him to thehospital.... We have not filed any complaints. All the doctors that have been coming here are private or fromNGOs.89
They made us homeless and they took my son.... The police came from one sideand the crowd came from the other. They started setting fire to things and firing shots. My son was shot andkilled. He was twenty-two years old. They collected all the young men. The police were calling the crowds. Thepolice had the mob behind them.
The Hindus called us outside to fight. When we came out, the police fired onus, twelve to thirteen people died.... They said come forward, then they started shouting, "Kill theMuslims, cut the Muslims, loot the Muslims." The police were with them and picked out the Muslim homesand set them on fire. The police aimed and fired at the Muslim boys. They then joined with the Hindus to setfire to the homes and to loot the homes. The police were carrying kerosene bottles and shooting and settingthe bottles on fire. The others were carrying swords and trishuls. Some of the attackers were wearing kesripattis [saffron bandannas] on their foreheads with the words "Jai Sri Ram" [Praise LordRam]. The attackers consisted of both people from our neighborhood and also people from outside. None of thedeaths from our area were from the Bajrang Dal, it was all from police firing. One person also lost hiseyesight as a result of police firing. One woman was burnt alive. She was old and couldn't run. She was cut inthree pieces. The police came inside [the Chartoda Kabristan area] and fired.90
I have never known a riot which has used the sexual subjugation of women sowidely as an instrument of violence as in the recent mass barbarity in Gujarat. There are reports everywhereof gang-rape, of young girls and women, often in the presence of members of their families, followed by theirmurder by burning alive, or by bludgeoning with a hammer and in one case with a screw driver. Women in theAman Chowk shelter told appalling stories about how armed men disrobed themselves in front of a group ofterrified women to cower them down further.96
My house has a small grocery store and I was there in the store. A mob camefrom Charanagar. Five hundred strong mob came from Kubernagar. Two thousand strong mob came. They startedriot, burning houses. We ran to nearby Gangotri society and took shelter on the terrace. The mob startedburning people at around 5 or 6 o'clock in the evening. The mob stripped all the girls of the localityincluding my 22-year-old daughter and raped them. My daughter was engaged. Seven members of my family wereburnt that includes my wife (age 40), my son (18), my son (14), my son (7), my daughter (4), my daughter (2).Police did not allow me to climb down from the terrace. My 8-year-old son has survived with 20 percent burninjuries and he remembers his mother. What can I do? My house and shop has been burnt.... They hit her on thehead and burnt. She had 80 percent burn injuries.98
I washed the ladies' bodies before burial. Some bodies had heads missing, somehad hands missing, some were like coal, you would touch them and they would crumble. Some women's bodies hadbeen split down the middle. I washed seventeen bodies on March 2, only one was completely intact. All had beenburned, many had been split down the middle. On March 3 fifteen more bodies came. Then I just threw water overthem, I couldn't stand to be around them anymore.101
Among the women surviving in relief camps, are many who have suffered the mostbestial forms of sexual violence - including rape, gang rape, mass rape, stripping, insertion of objects intotheir body, stripping, molestations. A majority of rape victims have been burnt alive.
On the afternoon of February 28th to escape the violent mob, about 40 of usgot on to a tempo [a vehicle]. My husband was driving the tempo... a Maruti car was blocking the road. A mobwas lying in wait. [My husband] had to swerve. The tempo overturned. As we got out they started attacking us.People started running in all directions. Some of us ran towards the river. I fell behind as I was carrying myson. The men caught me from behind and threw me on the ground. [My son] fell from my arms and started crying.My clothes were stripped off by the men and I was left stark naked. One by one the men raped me. All the whileI could hear my son crying. I lost count after 3. They then cut my foot with a sharp weapon and left me therein that state.103
The wide range of data collected reveals that the post-Godhra carnage hasaffected most women living in Vadodara in some way or the other. Lives of minority women have of coursechanged drastically. However, women from all communities are also affected by the reign of fear and the terrorpromoted by the state and the police. The Hindu women are caught in a fear psychosis that the"other" will attack. A lot of this has to do with the rumours that are being systematically spreadthrough various pamphlets and booklets. Livelihoods of all poor, working class women have been affected. Thesituation in the minority households is far more serious, and hunger has become an acute problem because theminority men too cannot go out to work. The deep sense of betrayal that women feel by neighbours and children"who grew up in front of my eyes [or in my aangan]" is seen across classes.105
"Mein bataoon Didi" (Shall I tell you?), volunteers a nine-year-old,"Balatkaar ka matlab jab aurat ko nanga karte hain aur phir use jala deta hain." (Rape is when awoman is stripped naked and then burnt) And then looks fixedly at the floor. Only a child can tell it like itis. For this is what happened again and again in Naroda Patia - women were stripped, raped and burnt. Burninghas now become an essential part of the meaning of rape.109
All the children's education has been disrupted. All businesses are closed.All savings are gone. My parents are so old they cannot go back to work. I will surely have to leave mystudies now and go to work. I was studying in the 11th standard. Still we won't get the governmentjobs, those are given to Hindus. We will have to do labor.110
The famous 500-year-old masjid in Isanpur, which was an ASI [ArcheologicalSurvey of India] monument, was destroyed with the help of cranes and bulldozers. The famous Urdu Poet WaliGujarati's dargah was also razed to the ground at Shahibaug in Ahmedabad. While a hanuman [a Hindu god]shrine was built over its debris initially, all that was removed overnight and the plot was [paved] and mergedwith the adjoining road. No authority claimed any knowledge about the entire episode. It is worth noting herethat the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, which is responsible for the maintenance of all these structures,and for the building of roads, is run by the Congress [party] with a near two-thirds majority.120
The riots came, we ran. We saw people getting cut up and burned. They usedswords and sharp weapons. The first two days we were somewhere else and then we came to the camp. They stoleall our things and burned our homes. They took our TVs, tapes, everything, even the beds. They tookeverything.... We have been here since March 1. We arrived at 3 a.m. Where will we go? The curfews are set.The police killed as well.123
On February 28 we were all sitting at home and heard a noise, this was aroundnoon. Our Hindu neighbor said, "Don't go out." If he said go then we could have run and savedourselves. He was drunk. Everyone started to surround the house. They all had swords and pipes. I locked thedoors. They then broke down the main door. They threw an iron pipe through the iron bars, which hit me acrossmy eyes. I got dizzy. They then started to set fire to things. I tried to close all the doors as fast as Icould, but they came in and hit me with pipes all over on my head, my legs. They were about to take out asword and cut me with it. But one Hindu had pity on me I guess and said, "Don't cut her, set her onfire." When I heard that I fainted. When I fainted they took off all of my jewels. They were screaming,"Ram bol." [Say Ram]. I think they then put me on top of the fire. My twelve-year-old niece draggedme off and threw water on me to save me. I was covered in blood. I had sent my brothers away; they went tohide in another Hindu's house. They thought I was dead so they moved on to the next Muslim house. My mothertook me inside the house. A Dalit scavenger brought the doctor to me. They gave me an injection because I wasgoing to hemorrhage. Finally the family doctor came. I was vomiting for two days. The police were nowhere.They did not help anyone. When we called they said, "You protect yourselves." The police are onlytwo minutes away from our home.124
We contacted this camp by mobile phone and people here sent a car for us andbrought us here. After we came our house was looted. They didn't even leave our animals. My mother was so fondof raising those animals. They took them, cut them, and ate them: our sheep, our chickens. There was a templein front of our house. They ate the animals there the next day. They took our gold, our silver. We had foursafes in the house. All of them were looted. They took our cutlery as well.125
In previous riots, we used to close the main gates to the residentialquarters, but not this time. The people inside were mixed up with this so they left the big gates open. Theywere always meeting about how to go after Muslims but we never believed it would happen to us, we have beenthere for so many years. I can't sleep properly. They are enemies of humanity. They are complete monsters anddevils.126
I ran to the police station, I fought the crowds to get through. Twoconstables told me, "You go and we'll follow you." But they never came. I came home and saw that mysister had been hit by a pipe.... These were Shiv Sena and VHP workers. We know the names of some of thepeople who did this. After the attack one of them made a call and told the person he was talking to move on tothe next Muslim home. They were coordinating everything on their cell phones. We filed a complaint againstthem. They didn't leave anything, even my childhood toys.... One of our Hindu neighbors told the mob not toburn our home otherwise theirs would catch on fire as well. He said, "Don't burn it just loot it."130
It all started at 10 a.m. on February 28. They came after the Muslim shops.Around 8 p.m., they attacked my quarters. They were screaming, "Jai Shri Ram." They opened the lockswith their iron pipes. They burned all the beddings but took all the nice things. They did not set fire to ourhouse because it was a flat system and Hindu homes would also have been affected. We were calling the policeall day. The police said, "You help yourselves, we are getting pressure from above, we cannot helpyou." We called fifty to a hundred times. Around 2:00 or 2:30 p.m. I saw a police inspector shake handswith the attackers and say, "You can loot peacefully, we won't do anything. We are with you."131
We filed a complaint and wrote down all the names. During the attack, thirtyto thirty-five went to hide in a Goanese Christian home after 6 p.m. Then the crowd surrounded that home andsaid, "You send them out or we will kill you too." After that we came here to the camp with policeescorts. We called the camp on our mobile phone and they sent the police to us to bring us here. We arrivedMarch 1 at 1 a.m. We then called the Christian family from here and they told us the crowds started lootingthe homes on March 1. Our dowry, marriage money, machines, etc. all of them were looted. They even took thetwo lights and the wiring and the fan. They took everything. They took my brother's new cycle but set my oldone on fire.132
The gory details of the Godhra incident, depicting charred bodies through theelectronic media, aroused passions of the people of Gujarat on a very large scale. In the wake of the call for"Gujarat bandh" and the possible fall-out of the Godhra incident, the State Government took allpossible precautions. However, on account of widespread reporting in the media, incidents of violence on alarge-scale started occurring in Ahmedabad, Baroda... Crowds that assembled in the towns were huge andconsisted of higher and middle class people. It became difficult even to implement the curfew. Due to timelymeasures taken by the State Government, major incidents were contained within 72 hours and normality andconfidence of the public were restored.144