The Hindu : Memo submitted to President

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Mar 09, 2002

National

National

Memo submitted to President
By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MARCH 8. The President, K.R. Narayanan, today told a delegation of the All India Milli Council (AIMC) that he felt deeply concerned and ashamed of the carnage in Gujarat.

The delegation which submitted a memorandum also claimed that the President had asked the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, to deploy the Army after the Opposition MPs had called on him earlier this week.

Briefing correspondents after the meeting, the delegation leaders said the President had also expressed the view that had the police acted many lives would have been saved.

The AIMC urged Mr. Narayanan to dismiss the Gujarat Government and hand over the riot-affected areas to the Army to control the situation. In its memorandum, the council secretary- general, Qazi Mujhaidul Islam Qasmi, demanded that a judicial inquiry by a sitting Supreme Court judge be instituted to probe the Godhra incident and bloody riots elsewhere in Gujarat, and ban the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal.

The Council also protested the Gujarat Government's move to pay Rs. one lakh compensation to those killed in riots and Rs. two lakh for the victims of the Godhra train fire charging it with ``discriminating even in death''.

The Council also alleged that the violence that erupted in various parts of Gujarat after the Godhra incident was a ``well-planned orgy of violence executed by the VHP, Bajrang Dal and other constituents of the Sangh Parivar in connivance with the State Government''.

It said while the State Government claimed to have arrested nearly 4,000 people, there were few belonging to the VHP, Bajrang Dal and BJP.

``There are reports that the State Government is deliberately avoiding the arrests of atleast 150 VHP, Bajrang Dal and BJP workers whose names figure in the FIRs by the police for directly leading mobs, slaughtering Muslims and indulging in deliberate violence'', the memorandum said.

The Council demanded that the victims be paid compensation uniformly and that it be paid on the lines of the Delhi High Court judgment on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National