Modi demands apology on Godhra

Modi said these people were now too ashamed to show their face. If they value truth and justice, they should apologise to the people of Gujarat, he said.

He was speaking on Thursday evening after dedicating the Pandit Deen Dayal Road at the Kankaria area.

The report of the Nanavati panel, which earlier the same day had been placed in the state assembly, said the incident in Godhra in which 59 people, mostly Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists returning from Ayodhya, were killed when the Sabarmati Express caught fire Feb 27, 2002, was a conspiracy.

“The bogus secular forces were shouting hoarse against us. Yet we kept our silence in the hope that the truth will come out one day and the secular mask will be ripped off the faces of these men,” Modi said.

He said the formation and empanelling of the judges was done under the direction of the Supreme Court and neither he nor his government had any role to play.

“If you have any evidence against me or my ministers then come out with it,” Modi said, adding the Nanavati panel report had proved where the truth lay.

He also said vote bank politics was being played over the Godhra issue.

“When there is an authorised commission inquiring into the riots how can the Congress appoint the UC Banerjee Commission?” Modi asked adding Congress was more concerned with its vote bank politics.

“They wanted ‘behn’ to be happy,'” Modi said in an apparent reference to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.

The UC Banerjee Commission had said the Godhra incident was an accident contrary to the first part of the Nanavati Commission report, tabled in the assembly Thursday, which said it was a pre-planned conspiracy and not an accident.

By December, the Nanavati Commission is likely to submit the second part of its report about its full findings on the post-Godhra riots, which killed over 1,000 people, mostly Muslim, and the role of the government in it.