We Have No Orders to Save You - Human Rights Watch

and religious spaces. On religious holidays, such as Moharram, a Muslim day of remembrance, or the Hindu
festival of Holi, Gujarat is now a tinderbox: the slightest provocation can and often does turn into widespread
violence. The government’s failure to denounce discrimination and hold perpetrators of communal violence
accountable for their acts is an important reason the cycle of violence and discrimination continues.
Impunity for Attacks Against Muslims
The machinery of justice in Gujarat is stacked against Muslims. Since the beginning of the 2002 violence in
Gujarat, no less than forty reports have been released by human rights and citizens’ groups documenting the scale
of the violence, the complicity of the state government, the military-like planning of the attacks, and the failure to
rehabilitate the victims and prosecute the offenders. 1 The reports of India’s own National Human Rights
Commission also strongly condemned the Gujarat government for its failure to contain the violence.
Investigations by the Concerned Citizens’ Tribunal, headed by former Indian Supreme Court judges, revealed that
senior ministers from Gujarat Chief Minister Narenda Modi’s cabinet organized a meeting in Lunawada village of
Sabarkantha district just hours after the attack in Godhra on February 27, 2002. At the meeting, a plan was drawn
up and disseminated to the top fifty leaders of the BJP, RSS, Bajrang Dal and VHP detailing the methods and
strategies for the revenge killings that followed the Godhra massacre. The instructions were then methodically
carried out by the police.
Although the government initially boasted of arrests in the thousands, many of those arrested have since been
released on bail without further proceedings, acquitted, or simply let go. In “We Have No Orders to Save You,”
Human Rights Watch reported that the Gujarat state administration was engaged in a massive cover-up of the
state’s role in 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 as instigators or participants in the attacks. The few that were arrested have since been released on bail.
The police reportedly face continuous pressure from the state to avoid making arrests or to reduce the severity of
the charges filed. In many instances, the police refused to include in FIRs the names of perpetrators identified by
victims. Instead, police registered what are known as “omnibus FIRs,” in which the accused is identified only as
“an unruly mob” or “a mob of 10,000.” Police also filed false charges against Muslim youth arbitrarily detained
during combing operations in largely destroyed Muslim neighborhoods. Officers who tried to keep the peace or
stop murderous mobs were transferred or faced the wrath of their superiors.
The patterns identified in Human Rights Watch’s previous report continue unabated throughout Gujarat. In both
Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, Gujarat’s capital, Human Rights Watch spoke to numerous eyewitnesses, lawyers,
activists, and officials involved in the preparation of criminal cases against the perpetrators of the attacks and the
distribution of victim relief services. Human Rights Watch research suggests that few if any of those most
responsible for violence against Muslims are in custody: most of those who remain in jail belong to marginalized
Dalit (“untouchable”), Muslim, or tribal communities. Moreover, the instigators and ringleaders of the attacks
may escape prosecution altogether because of manipulations in the filing of chargesheets and FIRs, shoddy
investigations, and a biased judiciary.
Witnesses who initially came forward to file FIRS and identify their attackers have since been harassed,
threatened, or bribed into turning hostile on the witness stand or simply not showing up when the case goes to
1 The following is partial listing of book-length reports on the violence in Gujarat: Concerned Citizens Tribunal, Crime
Against Humanity, vols. I&II (Mumbai: Citizens for Justice and Peace, 2002); Siddharth Varadarajan ed., Gujarat: The
Making of a Tragedy (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 2002); M.L. Sondhi and Apratim Mukarji eds., The Black Book of Gujarat
(New Delhi: Manak Publications Pvt. Ltd., 2002); Indian Social Institute, The Gujarat Pogrom, (New Delhi: Indian Social
Institute, June 2002); Javed Anand and Teesta Setalvad eds., “Genocide—Gujarat 2002,” Communalism Combat, March-
April, 2002, Year 8, no. 77-78; John Dayal ed., Gujarat 2002: Untold and Re-told Stories of the Hindutva Lab (Delhi: Media
House, 2002); Paul Mike and Aloysius Irudayam, Racial Hegemony: Gujarat Genocide (Madurai and Chennai: Institute of
Development Education, Action & Studies, All India Catholic University Federation, and Jesuit Youth Ministry in South
Asia, 2002); and Swami Agnivesh and Valson Thampu, Harvest of Hate: Gujarat Under Siege (New Delhi: Rupa Co., 2002).
For regular updates on developments in Gujarat see www.onlinevolunteers.org.
HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH 5 JULY 2003, Vol. 15, No. 3 (C)