Mr Modi owes a "debt" to the work of Gujarat police and anti-terrorist squad officers for suppressing Pakistan-backed terrorism in Gujarat and clearing a path for the state's development model.
Source/Credit: The Australian
By Amanda Hodge | September 6, 2013
INDIA'S most likely next prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been implicated by his former Gujarat police chief in a series of "fake encounters" in which suspected terrorists were killed in staged confrontations.
The explosive accusation against the Gujarat Chief Minister was made this week in a public resignation letter by the state's suspended police director-general, DG Vanzara, jailed since 2007 with 31 other officers over the deaths of four alleged terror suspects in Gujarat.
The fresh scandal could not have come at a worse time.
Mr Modi has already been selected by the Bharatiya Janata Party to lead the opposition's election campaign ahead of next May's national polls, in which the Congress party is expected to take a beating for presiding over an economic downturn and two terms of graft-ridden governance.
He is also widely tipped to be selected as the BJP's prime ministerial candidate.
But Mr Modi remains a controversial choice because of his association with the deadly Gujarat riots of 2002 in which more than 1000 Muslims and about 200 Hindus across the state were slain in a frenzy of retaliation for an alleged attack on a train carriage carrying Hindu pilgrims.
In his resignation letter this week, Vanzara says Gujarat police "simply acted and performed their duties in compliance (with) the conscious policy of this government", and that "a pro-active policy of zero tolerance for terrorism was adopted by Gujarat at the highest level".
He claims Mr Modi owes a "debt" to the work of Gujarat police and anti-terrorist squad officers for suppressing Pakistan-backed terrorism in Gujarat and clearing a path for the state's development model, on which the chief minister has based his prime ministerial campaign.
"Everyone knows this government has been reaping very rich political dividends for the last 12 years by keeping the glow of encounter cases alive in Gujarat," Vanzara writes.
Among the charges against him is that he led the "fake encounter" killings of university student Ishrat Jahan, 19, and her three associates in 2004, and later the assassination of alleged gun-runner Sohrabuddin Sheikh. Police claimed they were Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists plotting to assassinate Mr Modi.
At least 550 such staged killings by police have occurred in the past four years.
Mr Modi has had considerable success in rehabilitating his domestic and international image of late, stained by allegations that he encouraged the Gujarat riots and ordered police not to intervene as Hindus rampaged through Muslim communities. One investigation cleared Mr Modi, but other probes have found police and government officials directed rioters towards Muslim-owned properties.
While Britain and the EU have recently softened their attitude towards the divisive Gujarat leader, largely due to the investment opportunities in the western Indian state, the US continues to deny him a visa.
Read original post here: India's would-be PM implicated in killings
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