Revealing truth is a kind of social service and Tehelka is doing the same by disclosing the hidden facts behind the Gujarat riots occurred five years back. Tehelka reporter Ashish Khaitan took six months to meet all the accused and other personalities linked with the Gujarat riots and post-riots events. His investigations have revealed something that had been restricted to the realm of speculation and closed-door conversation for a long time.
However, many of these confessions have already been made in the Nanawati Commission. Now, the details have been come out in public. Tehelka showed on-camera confessions by the people in question for their roles in the riots. The most shocking revelation was that the people who confessed their roles in riots were close aids to CM Narendra Modi. Many of them have now fallen out with the Modi Government.
No civil society can accept such kind of riots, at the same time the society should not accept such people who want to take advantages of such incidents again and again. The major questions are being raised against the honesty of the investigating journalism. Is there any particular theory working behind the timing of exposing such confessions? What impact are the Tehelka investigations going to have on Narendra Modi and the BJP?
Babu Bajrangi, Shiv Sena leader in Gujarat, made the on-camera confessions that he killed a pregnant woman during the riots. He was a close associate of Modi in 2002. However, the scene has been changed in 2007 and the relationship has completely gone opposite. It has been converted to a relationship of hostility. Another name came in the on-camera confession was of Gordhan Zadaphia, the then minister of state for home affairs, are now at opposite pole against Modi.
Senior BJP leader Rajiv Pratap Rudy said that this was a surprising thing that why these confession came out against Modi when the assembly elections have been been announced. Rudy said:
Definitely the sting operation and its content are suspect, because we are aware for sometime that there are detractors against Modi in Gujarat and there is the Congress party, which has lost all ground in the state. So these are situations, which may have been prompted by them.
Was it a political investigation sponsored by the opposition parties in Gujarat? Rudy termed Tehelka as an investigating agency of the Congress because it had acted like this earlier also and it is doing so the same this time again. Rudy further said that this is not the first time that Modi has been targeted like this. His political opponents have made all the efforts to derail him from active politics.
Later, Rudy said that the BJP has decided to seek a mandate on the issue of development in the coming Gujarat elections. Elements against development in the state are involved in these activities.
When the judiciary is doing necessary to punish the culprits, is there any need to conduct such sting operations to divert people’s attention from development to the incidents of communal riots occurred five years back in Gujarat?
