Thirty-eight-year-old Mehboob Mansoori lost eighteen family members in themassacre of Muslims in the neighborhood of Gulmarg Society, Ahmedabad. He was interviewed by Human RightsWatch three weeks after the attack. His story is representative of many testimonies contained in this report.
They burnt my whole family.
At 3:30 p.m. they started cutting people up, and by 4:30 p.m. it was gameover. Ehsan Jaffrey was also killed. He was holding the door closed. Then the door broke down. They pulled himout and hit him with a sword across the forehead, then across the stomach, then on his legs.... They then tookhim on the road, poured kerosene on him and burned him. There was no police at all. If they were there thenthis wouldn't have happened.
Eighteen people from my family died. All the women died. My brother, mythree sons, one girl, my wife's mother, they all died. My boys were aged ten, eight, and six. My girl wastwelve years old. The bodies were piled up. I recognized them from parts of their clothes used foridentification. They first cut them and then burned them. Other girls were raped, cut, and burned. First theytook their jewelry, I was watching from upstairs. I saw it with my own eyes. If I had come outside, I wouldalso have been killed. Four or five girls were treated this way. Two married women also were raped and cut.Some on the hand, some on the neck.
At 5:30 p.m. a car came, it was the assistant commissioner. They brought usout slowly; some were hiding in the water tank underground. Some tried to get out but were attacked.Sixty-five to seventy people were killed inside. After the police came we told them to take us somewhere safe.They brought us to the camp. We didn't go to the police station. Three patients were admitted in the civilhospital. On March 3 and 4 the police came here to file complaints, but only after camp organizers calledthem.
Indian government officials have acknowledged that since February 27, 2002,more than 850 people have been killed in communal violence in the state of Gujarat, most of them Muslims.Unofficial estimates put the death toll as high as 2,000. At this writing, murders are continuing, withviolence spreading to rural areas fanned by ongoing hate campaigns and economic boycotts against Muslims. Theattacks against Muslims in Gujarat have been actively supported by state government officials and by thepolice.
The violence in Gujarat began after a Muslim mob in the town of Godhraattacked and set fire to two carriages of a train carrying Hindu activists. Fifty-eight people were killed,many of them women and children. The activists were returning from Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, where theysupported a campaign led by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council, VHP) to construct a temple to theHindu god Ram on the site of a sixteenth century mosque destroyed by Hindu militants in 1992. The Ayodhyacampaign continues to raise the spectre of further violence in the country-Hindu-Muslim violence following thedestruction of the mosque claimed thousands of lives in the city of Bombay and elsewhere in 1992 and 1993. TheVHP claims that the mosque was built on a site that was the birthplace of Ram.
Between February 28 and March 2, 2002, a three-day retaliatory killing spreeby Hindus left hundreds dead and tens of thousands homeless and dispossessed, marking the country's worstreligious bloodletting in a decade. The looting and burning of Muslim homes, shops, restaurants, and places ofworship was also widespread. Tragically consistent with the longstanding pattern of attacks on minorities andDalits (or so-called untouchables) in India, and with previous episodes of large-scale communal violence inIndia, scores of Muslim girls and women were brutally raped in Gujarat before being mutilated and burnt todeath. Attacks on women and girls, including sexual violence, are detailed throughout this report.
The Gujarat government chose to characterize the violence as a"spontaneous reaction" to the incidents in Godhra. Human Rights Watch's findings, and those ofnumerous Indian human rights and civil liberties organizations, and most of the Indian press indicate that theattacks on Muslims throughout the state were planned, well in advance of the Godhra incident, and organizedwith extensive police participation and in close cooperation with officials of the Bharatiya Janata Party(Indian People's Party, BJP) state government.
The attacks on Muslims are part of a concerted campaign of Hindu nationalistorganizations to promote and exploit communal tensions to further the BJP's political rule-a movement that issupported at the local level by militant groups that operate with impunity and under the patronage of thestate. The groups most directly responsible for violence against Muslims in Gujarat include the Vishwa HinduParishad, the Bajrang Dal, the ruling BJP, and the umbrella organization Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (NationalVolunteer Corps, RSS), all of whom collectively form the sangh parivar (or "family" of Hindunationalist groups). These organizations, although different in many respects, have all promoted the argumentthat because Hindus constitute the majority of Indians, India should be a Hindu state.
Nationwide violence against India's Muslim community in 1992 and 1993 andagainst India's Christian community since 1998, including in the state of Gujarat, have also stemmed from theviolent activities and hate propaganda of these groups. Human Rights Watch and Indian human rights groups havelong warned of the potential scale of death and destruction resulting from the sangh parivar's Hindunationalist agenda.1 If the activities of these groupsremain unchecked, violence may continue to engulf the state, and may spread to other parts of the country.
The state of Gujarat and the central government of India initially blamedPakistan for the train massacre, which it called a "pre-meditated" "terrorist" attackagainst Hindus in Godhra. The recent revival of the Ram temple campaign, and heightened fears of terrorismsince September 11 were exploited by local Hindu nationalist groups and the local press which printed reportsof a "deadly conspiracy" against Hindus by Muslims in the state. On February 28, one local languagepaper headline read: "Avenge blood for blood." Muslim survivors of the attacks repeatedly told HumanRights Watch that they were told to "go back to Pakistan." Anti-Pakistan and anti-Muslim sentimentshad been building up in Gujarat long before the revival of the Ayodha Ram temple campaign. Human Rights Watchwas unable to verify conflicting accounts of what led to the mob attack on the Sabarmati Express in Godhrathough local police investigations have ruled out the notion that it was either organized or planned.
The state government initially charged those arrested in relation to theattack on the Godhra train under the controversial and draconian Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO, nowthe Prevention of Terrorism Act), but filed ordinary criminal charges against those accused of attacks onMuslims. Bowing to criticism from political leaders and civil society across the country, the chief ministerdropped the POTO charges but stated that the terms of POTO may be applied at a later date.
Three weeks after the attacks began, Human Rights Watch visited the city ofAhmedabad, a site of large-scale destruction, murder, and several massacres, and spoke to both Hindu andMuslim survivors of the attacks. The details of the massacres of Muslims in the neighborhoods of Naroda Patiaand Gulmarg Society and of retaliatory attacks against Hindus in Jamalpur are included in this report. HumanRights Watch was able to document patterns in Ahmedabad that echo those of previous episodes of anti-Muslimviolence throughout the state and of anti-minority violence over the years in many parts of the country-mostnotably the Bombay riots in 1992 and 1993, and the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984.2These include the role of sangh parivar organizations, political parties, and the local media in promotinganti-minority propaganda, the exploitation of communal differences to mask political and economic motivesunderlying the attacks, local and state government complicity in the attacks, and the failure of thegovernment to meet its constitutional and international obligations to protect minorities.
Between February 28 and March 2 the attackers descended with militia-likeprecision on Ahmedabad by the thousands, arriving in trucks and clad in saffron scarves and khaki shorts, thesignature uniform of Hindu nationalist-Hindutva-groups.3Chanting slogans of incitement to kill, they came armed with swords, trishuls (three-pronged spearsassociated with Hindu mythology), sophisticated explosives, and gas cylinders. They were guided by computerprintouts listing the addresses of Muslim families and their properties, information obtained from theAhmedabad municipal corporation among other sources, and embarked on a murderous rampage confident that thepolice was with them. In many cases, the police led the charge, using gunfire to kill Muslims who got in themobs' way. A key BJP state minister is reported to have taken over police control rooms in Ahmedabad on thefirst day of the carnage, issuing orders to disregard pleas for assistance from Muslims. Portions of theGujarati language press meanwhile printed fabricated stories and statements openly calling on Hindus to avengethe Godhra attacks.
In almost all of the incidents documented by Human Rights Watch the policewere directly implicated in the attacks. At best they were passive observers, and at worse they acted inconcert with murderous mobs and participated directly in the burning and looting of Muslim shops and homes andthe killing and mutilation of Muslims. In many cases, under the guise of offering assistance, the police ledthe victims directly into the hands of their killers. Many of the attacks on Muslim homes and places ofbusiness also took place in close proximity to police posts. Panicked phone calls made to the police, firebrigades, and even ambulance services generally proved futile. Many witnesses testified that their callseither went unanswered or that they were met with responses such as: "We don't have any orders to saveyou"; "We cannot help you, we have orders from above"; "If you wish to live in Hindustan,learn to protect yourself"; "How come you are alive? You should have died too"; "Whosehouse is on fire? Hindus' or Muslims'?" In some cases phone lines were eventually cut to make itimpossible to call for help.
Surviving family members have faced the added trauma of having to fend forthemselves in recovering and identifying the bodies of their loved ones. The bodies have been buried in massgravesites throughout Ahmedabad. Gravediggers testified that most bodies that had arrived-many were stillmissing-were burned and butchered beyond recognition. Many were missing body parts-arms, legs, and even heads.The elderly and the handicapped were not spared. In some cases, pregnant women had their bellies cut open andtheir fetuses pulled out and hacked or burned before the women were killed.
Muslims in Gujarat have been denied equal protection under the law. Even asattacks continue, the Gujarat state administration has been engaged in a massive cover-up of the state's rolein the massacres and that of the sangh parivar. Eyewitnesses filed numerous police First Information Reports (FIRs),the initial reports of a crime recorded by the police, that named local VHP, BJP, and Bajrang Dal leaders asinstigators or participants in the attacks. Few if any of these leaders have been arrested as the police,reportedly under instructions from the state, face continuous pressure not to arrest them or to reduce theseverity of the charges filed. In many instances, the police have also refused to include in FIRs the names ofperpetrators identified by the victims. Police have, however, filed false charges against Muslim youtharbitrarily detained during combing operations in Muslim neighborhoods that have been largely destroyed. Thestate government has entrusted a criminal probe into the deadliest of attacks in Ahmedabad, in the NarodaPatia and Gulmarg Society neighborhoods, to an officer handpicked by the VHP, the organization implicated inorganizing and perpetrating these massacres.
On April 3, India's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) released thepreliminary findings of its report on the violence, a strong indictment of the failure of the Gujaratgovernment to contain the violence. As the commission awaited a response from the state government beforereleasing a comprehensive report, its very authority to intervene in the matter was being challenged in thestate's High Court based on the fact that a state-appointed judicial commission of inquiry was already inplace. Following the trail of other commissions of inquiry appointed by the state in the wake of communalriots in 1969 and 1985-whose recommendations have yet to be implemented-the current state commission inspireslittle hope of justice. One lawyer noted, "The state government is involved and is a party to whathappened. How can a party appoint a judge? We cannot expect him to give justice." India's NationalCommission for Minorities (NCM) and National Commission for Women (NCW) have also been severely critical ofthe Gujarat government's response to the violence and its aftermath.
Government figures indicate that more than 98,000 people are residing in overone hundred newly created relief camps throughout the state, an overwhelming majority of them Muslim. Theyhold little hope for justice and remain largely unprotected by the police and local authorities. One reliefcamp resident asked: "The same people who shot at us are now supposed to protect us? There is no faith inthe police." A lack of faith has also kept many camp residents from approaching the police to filecomplaints. Fearing for their lives, or fearing arrest, many have also been unable to leave the camps toreturn to what is left of their homes.
The state government has failed to provide adequate and timely humanitarianassistance to internally displaced persons in Gujarat. Problems documented in this report include seriousdelays in government assistance reaching relief camps, inadequate state provision of medical and food suppliesand sanitation facilities, and lack of access and protection for nongovernmental (NGO) relief workers seekingto assist victims of violence. Muslims have also been denied equal access to relief assistance. Governmentauthorities are also reported to be absent from many Muslim camps. In sharp contrast to the international andIndian community's response following a massive earthquake in the state in January 2001-when millions ofdollars in aid from the international community and civil society poured into the state-the onus for providingfood, medical support, and other supplies for victims of violence rests largely on local NGO and Muslimvoluntary groups.
The relief camps visited by Human Rights Watch were desperately lacking ingovernment and international assistance. One camp with 6,000 residents was located on the site of a Muslimgraveyard. Residents were literally sleeping in the open, between the graves. One resident remarked:"Usually the dead sleep here, now the living are sleeping here."
The disbursement of financial compensation and the process of rehabilitationfor victims of the violence has been painstakingly slow and has failed to include all of those affected.Initially compensation was disbursed on a communal basis: the state government announced that the families ofHindus killed in Godhra would receive Rs. 200,000 (U.S.$4,094)4while the families of Muslims killed in retaliatory attacks would receive Rs. 100,000-a statement that waslater retracted, in part due to widespread criticism from nongovernmental organizations and Indian officialsoutside the state of Gujarat.
In the wake of the massive earthquake in January 2001 that, according togovernment reports, claimed close to 14,000 lives and left over one million homeless, the state of Gujaratalso faces economic devastation. The economic impact is felt acutely by both Hindu and Muslim survivors of theattacks whose homes and personal belongings have been destroyed, and whose businesses have been burnt to theground. Others reside in neighborhoods where curfews have yet to be lifted, limiting their mobility. Thousandsare also unable to leave the relief camps to go to work for fear of further attacks. Many Muslims do not havejobs to which to return-their employers have hired Hindus in their place. An economic boycott against Muslimsin certain parts of the state has helped to ensure their continued and long-term impoverishment. Acute foodshortages resulting in starvation have been reported in areas of Ahmedabad where Muslim communities are forcedinto isolation, afraid to leave their enclaves to get more supplies. Children's education has also beenseverely disrupted while the threat of measles and other outbreaks looms large in Ahmedabad camps.
On April 4, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee visited Gujarat andannounced a federal relief package for riot victims. Vajpayee, who earlier described the burning alive of men,women, and children, as a "blot on the country's face," stated that the Godhra attack was"condemnable" but what followed was "madness." His comments stood in deep contrast tothose of the state's chief minister, Narendra Modi, formerly a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh volunteer andpropagandist, who at the height of the carnage declared that, "The five crore [fifty million] people ofGujarat have shown remarkable restraint under grave provocation," referring to the Godhra attacks.
On April 12, the BJP proposed early elections in Gujarat soon after rejectingChief Minister Narendra Modi's offer to resign. Early elections in the aftermath of the attacks may favor theHindu nationalist vote in the state-a primary objective of the sangh parivar nationwide-and Narendra Modi'scontinued tenure as chief minister. As this report was going to press, national political parties werepressing to remove Modi, leading the BJP to set aside the early election option. The upper and lower houses ofthe Indian parliament were preparing for parliamentary debates on the violence in Gujarat while oppositionparties were pushing for a vote to censure the national government.
This report is by no means a comprehensive account of the violence that beganon February 27. Ahmedabad was only one of many cities affected. Reports from other areas indicate that theviolence was statewide, affecting at least twenty-one cities and sixty-eight provinces. Information from theseareas also suggest a consistent pattern in the methods used, undermining government assertions that these were"spontaneous" "communal riots." As one activist noted, "no riot lasts for three dayswithout the active connivance of the state."
Gujarat is only one of several Indian states to have experienced post-Godhraviolence, though elsewhere incidents have been sporadic and were often immediately contained. Events wereunfolding every day as this report went to press including developments related to the political future of theGujarat government.
Both the Godhra incident and the attacks that ensued throughout Gujarat havebeen documented in meticulous detail by Indian human rights and civil liberties groups and by the Indianpress. Their painstaking documentation of the attacks, often under grave security conditions, has been citedthroughout this report. In some cases, the names of victims have been changed or withheld for theirprotection. Names of human rights activists have also been withheld to ensure their ability to continue theirimportant work, an unfortunate indicator of the volatility surrounding the issue of communal violence inGujarat and beyond.
All of the communities affected continue to live with a deep sense ofinsecurity, fearing further attacks and a cycle of retaliation. Not included in this report are many heroicaccounts of individual police and of Hindu and Muslim civilians who risked their lives and livelihoods torescue and shelter one another, and the many peace activities that have been organized by citizens amidst theruins of the state.
The violence in Gujarat has triggered widespread outrage in India. Civilsociety groups from across the world have also mobilized to condemn the attacks and appeal for justice andintervention. Responding to growing international scrutiny into the violence, however, the Indian governmenthas stated that it "does not appreciate interference in [its] internal affairs."5Human Rights Watch calls on the Indian government to prevent further attacks and prosecute those foundresponsible for the violence in Gujarat, including state government and police officials complicit in theattacks. We call on the international community to put pressure on the Indian government to comply withinternational human rights and Indian constitutional law and end impunity for current and past campaigns togenerate communal violence against Indian minorities.
Assistance from international humanitarian and United Nations agencies issorely needed for Hindus and Muslims in relief camps. Human Rights Watch urges the Indian government toactively seek the assistance of these groups and to invite United Nations human rights experts to investigatestate participation and complicity in the violence in Gujarat.
1 See for example, HumanRights Watch, "Politics By Other Means: Attacks Against Christians in India," A Human RightsWatch Report, vol. 11, no. 6, September 1999; and Smita Narula, "India's Minorities Are Targets ofGovernment-Abetted Violence," International Herald Tribune, March 20, 2000.
2 The then-rulingCongress (I) party was charged with complicity in the killing of over 2,000 Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 followingthe assassination of Congress party president Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguard.
3 Hindutwa, Hindutva,or Hinduvata refers to a movement for Hindu awakening.
4 At this writing, oneU.S. dollar was equivalent to 48.85 Indian rupees.
5 "India warnsagainst criticism over Gujarat," Agence France-Presse, April 22, 2002.
