Fact: Far from it, the police was slow to act on Muslim fanatics for fear of being called ‘anti-Muslim’ by the media as implied by the report of India Today dated 20th May 2002. As many as 170 people were shot dead by the police in Gujarat- i.e. killed in police firing as of 27 April 2002 according to Times of India dated 28 April 2002 while the official records now show 199 killed in police firing, till the end of the riots. Since riots continued till 10 May 2002, it explains the increase in the number of police firing deaths, since more were killed after 28 April and also some injured earlier may have died later.
Some Muslims greeted the police, and also the army, with bullets and turned off the power supply and made life hell, and also started riots and accused the police of being biased, when the police came to search for armories in some Muslim areas like Juhapura, Kalupur etc, as reported by a major weekly India Today. For fear of being labeled anti-Muslim, the police failed to do their duty.
The official records show that as many as 552 security personnel were injured trying to control the riots- 83 officers, 419 men and 50 Home Guard. Many policemen lost their lives as well, like when a mob burnt alive a policeman in Juhapura on 1st March 2002 as reported by The Hindu the next day, or in Ahmedabad’s Gomtipur area on 21 April 2002- Ramnavami Day, when constable Amar Patil was stabbed to death.
India Today weekly in its issue dated 20 May 2002, clearly admits that, far from being anti-Muslim, the Gujarat police did not act speedily against Muslim fanatics and rioters, for fear of being called anti-Muslim by the biased and partisan media.
The India Today weekly report dated 20 May 2002 says-”A series of attacks on policemen by Muslims has further added to the lack of faith. Now, strapped with the anti-Muslim label, the police has been slow in acting against Muslim fanatics”.
See the link- http://archives.digitaltoday.in/indiatoday/20020520/states2.html
This will contain the above sentence in the 6th paragraph from the top.
The Gujarat Police saved at least 24,000 Muslims from certain death in the first three days-in places like Sanjeli, Bodeli, and Viramgam in particular.
Link- http://www.india-today.com/itoday/20020422/states.shtml
See passages 2,3 and 4 from the top.
Gujarat police shot dead 98 people in the first 3 days-majority of whom are Hindus. The Police arrested most of the accused for rioting. Also The Times of India in a report titled “More fall prey to police firings in Gujarat” dated 28 April 2002 says that a total of 35,552 people were arrested for rioting in Gujarat- out of whom 27,901 were Hindus.
Moreover, the prosecution of the police was so efficient that until now, at least 443 people have been convicted for the violence in Gujarat-out of whom at least 332 are Hindus and 111 are Muslims (31 for Godhra and 80 for post-Godhra). As from the newspaper reports available to us itself we can see 249 convictions, 184 Hindus and 65 Muslims (31 for Godhra and 34 for post-Godhra) which in itself is a world record. The list of all the newspaper reports is given in Myth 21. The actual convictions are 443- 332 Hindus and 111 Muslims according to official records.This is so, since the newspapers did not seem to report all the convictions, or we did not record all of them or both.
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