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BJP slams report on Gujarat massacres

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI NOV. 22. The Bharatiya Janata Party today rubbished the Justice Krishna Iyer Concerned Citizens' Tribunal report on the Gujarat massacres, while the Congress promised all possible legal action on the report if voted to power, including arrest and trial of the Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, who has been directly indicted by the Tribunal for the post-Godhra violence.

"The report is entirely false, it is full if lies and is politically motivated," the BJP spokesperson, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, said even as he admitted that "neither the party, nor the Gujarat Government, nor any Hindu organisation cooperated with the Tribunal." Its conclusions were foregone, Mr. Malhotra added, even as he lashed out at "pseudo-secularists and Hindu haters".

The Congress spokesperson, Satyavat Chaturvedi, was quick to demand that Mr. Modi be immediately removed from the post of Chief Minister and "tried under law for the offences committed as no one can or should be above the law".

The Tribunal of nine distinguished members had concluded that the State Government had actively used the Godhra carnage for inciting communal passions and triggering large-scale attacks in Ahmedabad, Baroda and elsewhere. The burning of a coach of the Sabarmati Express with passengers on board in Godhra was found to be of an "accidental nature" by the Tribunal which is yet to bring out its third and last volume. But the BJP used the occasion to attack "secularists" and described Justice Iyer and Justice Sawant, who was also a member of the Tribunal, as "Hindu haters" while arrogating to the party and the Sangh Parivar outfits the right to speak on behalf of or represent the "Hindu" view.

Mr. Malhotra claimed that the report would further anger the Gujaratis (gussa aur bhadkega).

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