New Delhi, Dec 28: In his 1st public statement on the 2002 sectarian riots, Gujarat Chief Minister and BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi Friday aforesaid he had been “shaken to the core” by the riots. The Congress fired it as an “exercise in hypocrisy”.
A day when an Ahmedabad court fired a plea in a case about the communal riots, Modi, in a over 1,000 word-long blog post, termed the post-Godhra riots as a “crippling blow to an already shattered and hurting Gujarat” and also the court finding created him feel “at peace”.
“I was agitated to the core. ‘Grief’, ‘sadness’, ‘misery’, ‘pain’, ‘anguish’, ‘agony’ – mere words couldn’t capture absolutely the emptiness one felt on witnessing such inhumanity,” aforesaid Modi on the communal riots, that he had been suspect of complicity.
“Yesterday’s (Thursday) judgment culminated a method of unprecedented scrutiny closely monitored by the best court of the land… Gujarat’s twelve years of trial by the fire have finally drawn to an end.
“I feel liberated and deceased.”
An Ahmedabad court Thursday rejected a protest petition filed by the wife of former Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was killed within the riots along with dozens of neighbours. Zakia Jafri had filed a petition within the apex court objecting to the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team’s closure report absolving Modi of guilt within the murder.
In his statement, Modi aforesaid he wished to share his “inner thoughts and feelings with the state at large”.
He aforesaid he took over because the 14th chief minister of the state Oct 7, 2001, and was given the responsibility to “soothe and rebuild” when the Jan 26, 2001, devastating Bhuj earthquake.
“… however, the mindless violence of 2002 dealt us another unexpected blow.”
“On one aspect was the pain of the victims of the earthquake, and on the opposite, the pain of the victims of the riots,” Modi aforesaid in his blog.
Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, known as Thursday’s court finding a triumph of truth.
Modi has been blamed for not stopping the rioters. He had conjointly been denied a visa to us for the riots.
Attacking his critics, Modi said: “Can you imagine the inner turmoil and shock of being everlasting for the terribly events that have shattered you!”
“For so many years, they ceaselessly preserved their attack, going no stone unturned. What offended even a lot of was that in their overzealousness to hit at me for his or her slim personal and political ends, they finished up maligning my entire state and country. This heartlessly unbroken reopening the injuries that we have a tendency to were sincerely trying to heal,” he said.
The BJP leader added that Gujarat government skilled the violence a lot of “swiftly and resolutely than ever done before in any previous riots within the country”.
union info and Broadcasting Minister Manish Tewari fired Modi’s web log as an “exercise in hypocrisy to mention the least” and “an conceive to try to burnish his image for 2014 polls”.
“No expression of sorrow changes the truth that thousands of individuals were massacred,” he said.
Congress leader Renuka Chowdhary termed it a “farce” and aforesaid “an apology ought to return from the heart”.
Prakash Javadekar of the BJP said: “Any sensitive heart can perceive the pain that Narendra Modiji went tho’ for twelve years. he’s currently exculpated.”
Communal riots skint in Gujarat in Feb 2002 when a train carrying Hindu pilgrims was torched in Godhra, prompting a wave of revenge attacks against Muslims.
A special team appointed by the Supreme Court to investigate the role of Modi and 62 others within the violence aforesaid in 2012 it may notice no proof to prosecute the chief minister.
A court Thursday rejected Zakia Jafri’s appeal.