Earlier this week, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) released a controversial documentary on the 2002 Gujarat Riots that erupted in the wake of the Godhra massacre, when a mob of Islamists burned down a bogey of Karsevaks, resulting in the death of 59 people, including children and women.
However, the attempt was not a solemn pursuance to uncover the truth but to reignite the old controversy and smear PM Modi with malicious allegations. The documentary not only sought to whitewash the role of Islamists who set the Sabarmati Express on fire by casting aspersions about the identity of the arsonists, but it also relied on discredited testimonies and unreliable accounts to reinforce its propaganda against PM Modi.
The British broadcaster included the controversial Tehelka sting videos of Babu Bajrangi and Haresh Bhatt, interviews deemed by the courts inadmissible as evidence. At 45:00 onwards in the first episode of the two-part documentary, the report cites interviews of Babu Bajrangi and Haresh Bhatt to implicate PM Modi in the 2002 Gujarat Riots case.
In the sting video which has been touted as evidence in the BBC Documentary, Babu Bajrangi, the Bajrang Dal leader can be heard admitting that Narendra Modi as the chief minister of Gujarat helped him in taking vengeance for the Godhra train burnings.
Bajrangi could be heard saying, “There were Police right there, just standing with eyes closed. The cops could have easily stopped us had they wanted to. The cops fired at them (Muslims), but not at us.” Bajrangi also claimed that the cops even told his men to go and ‘finish’ the other side. “We used their own gas cylinders to create explosions in their homes. The Police used to get calls from (Muslims) for help but they never answered the calls,” he said.
Bajrangi then talked about the Police Commissioner who came and said that such a huge death toll cannot be reported. “The bodies were dumped across the city and then recovered for postmortems. We butchered them like what happened in Haldighati and we are proud of it. We did not spare anyone of them – be it the women or children, we slashed and burnt them all.”
Supreme Court rejects Babu Bajrangi’s sting as legally untenable
The interview of Babu Bajrangi alias Babubhai Patel, a Bajrang Dal leader who has been sentenced to 21 years imprisonment as the primary accused in the Naroda Patiya case, was recorded by Tehelka journalist Ashish Khetan, a former leader with the Aam Aadmi Party.
The Supreme Court, however, repudiated the interview, stating that sting operations carried out by Tehelka regarding the riots have no evidentiary value. While dismissing a plea filed by Zakia Jafri, the widow of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, challenging the clean chit given to the PM Narendra Modi by SIT in the 2002 Gujarat riots, the Supreme Court observed that the Tehelka tapes showing alleged confessions of some people are legally untenable.
“Upon investigation, if it was to be found that the tape and the contents have probative value, only then it could be used, that too against the maker of the statement alone and not against any other person,” the court noted.
Khetan wanted ‘spicy material’ for his thesis, admit Haresh Bhatt and Babu Bajrangi
However, Haresh Bhatt and Babu Bajrangi both later admitted that they were reading from a script and were asked to make explosive allegations by Khetan himself. Bhatt stated that Khetan had approached him because he wanted to write a thesis on ‘Hindutva’. Apparently, he wanted Bhatt to contribute some spicy material for the same so that he could succeed in furthering his narrative. Reportedly, Khetan, as a Tehelka correspondent visited Bhatt at his residence in Ahmedabad as well as at Godhra at least 7-8 times a month for the same.
Bhatt also admitted to having given answers as choreographed by Khetan in order to produce controversial material regarding the Gujarat riots. The accused stated that the talks about the CBI enquiry and the story that he owned a gun factory where diesel bombs and pipe bombs were made and distributed to Hindus were ‘absolutely false and baseless’.
The answer submitted to the state of Gujarat mentions how Bhatt and Bajrangi admitted to having ordered about two truck loads of swords from Punjab and subsequently distributed them amongst Hindus. The story of making a rocket launcher in his gun factory and lighting a locally made bomb was also false, as admitted by the accused.
He has also mentioned that whatever was being said by him about Narendra Modi in the clip was all imaginary. Hence, the extra-judicial sting operation run by Tehelka does not hold much water when its own characters have accepted that they made up stories for the camera.
Babu Bajrangi’s post-facto admission after the sting
In the response filed by the state of Gujarat, it highlighted the role of Babu Bajrangi whose admissions after the sting operation do not match with what he made up during the sting video. The response stated that Ashish Khetan had given Bajrangi a script while he read out the same during the sting. “After going through the facts stated by these persons during the sting operation, it appears that they were bragging and that most of the facts stated by them are innocent,” the response said.
The story about a gun factory owned by Haresh Bhatt was completely made up as no evidence for the same was unearthed during the police investigation. The factual inaccuracies in the claims made by Babu Bajrangi also include him claiming over 700-800 dead bodies from the Naroda Patiya village being thrown by Ahmedabad Police in different parts of the city, upon the direction of the Commissioner of Police. This was absolutely incorrect as only 84 dead bodies were found at Naroda Patiya and 11 persons were reported missing during the recovery.
Furthermore, the SIT instituted to investigate the Godhra riots revealed that Ahmedabad till noon on the day the violence broke and hence could not have remained present at Godhra at the time of the incident, highlighting the discrepancies in the claims made by Babu Bajrangi.
