Ahmedabad:
Today, Narendra Modi catches a major break - a Special Investigation Team (SIT) has said there is no prosecutable evidence against him for his alleged complicity in the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat. But just yesterday, the Gujarat High Court slammed his government for failing to protect 500 religious buildings during the same riots. Here are some excerpts from that judgement:
1) The court said that the government was guilty of a "major lapse" because it has failed to share with the state assembly a report by the National Human Rights Commission on the extent of damages to these buildings and the compensation due. The court pointed out that thought the government received the report in 2005, it has yet to introduce the document in the House.
"Such grave lapse on the part of the state government amounts to clear violation of Section 20 of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993," a division bench of acting Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya and Justice J B Pardiwit said.
2) The government had said that compensation had to be restricted to those whose homes or businesses were attacked, and could not be offered to places of religious worship.
"The policy of the state government taken in defence is one of evading the constitutional responsibility and will bring anarchy in the society, and thus, is detrimental to the establishment of the principles and the tenets of our Constitution," the court said.
3) The court also said that the policy would give a wrong signal to the citizens that "religious places should take up arms in their own hand because in the event of destruction of those places, no financial help would come from government. It will also encourage the religious bigots to destroy religious and other places of worship of the economically weaker section for the purpose of establishing their superiority over the others."
4) The judges attributed the riots to "negligence of the State" and censured it for "inaction", holding that it had resulted in an "anarchic" situation.
"Even if we for the sake of argument accept the defence of the State that the cause of riot was the general reaction from the incident of Sabarmati Express, the failure on part of the police intelligence to gather such general reaction (after the Godhra train burning incident) in time and to take appropriate timely action definitely come within expression 'negligence of the State'," the court said.
5) "Similarly, the fact remain that the anarchy continued unabated for days ... itself suggests lack of appropriate action or adequate action, if not inaction, on the part of the State in handling the situation," the judges observed.