NEW DELHI, 25 April — The Indian government rejected yesterday a call by the independent National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) for a Supreme Court inquiry into religious bloodshed in the western state of Gujarat.
Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani told the upper house of Parliament there was no need for such a probe since Gujarat’s state government had already appointed a commission of inquiry headed by a retired state high court judge.
Replying to queries by members of Parliament for the NHRC’s recommendations on how to bring peace to Gujarat — where over 900 people have been killed in violence since Feb. 27 — Advani said every suggestion of the commission “was being given the attention it deserves”. He conceded the NHRC report was critical of the state government’s handling of the outbreak of violence.
India’s upper house resumed after a week-long disruption by opposition MPs demanding the dismissal of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. The upper house resumed its agenda after its chairman, Vice President Krishan Kant, ruled discussion on the Gujarat government’s handling of the violence would be allowed.
Normalcy was restored in the lower house Tuesday after six days of opposition disruption, when Deputy Speaker P.M. Sayeed admitted a motion for debate and a censure vote. The federal coalition government had opposed any voting, and instead pressed for only a parliamentary discussion.
Human rights activists charged yesterday that police in Gujarat targeted and killed Muslims in an orgy of violence over the weekend. People’s Union of Civil Liberty, a rights organization based in the state’s commercial capital Ahmedabad, said it has filed a suit in the Supreme Court asking it to condemn the police, whom it accuses of shooting a number of Muslims at point-blank range.
Thirty people were killed in Hindu-Muslim violence between Sunday and Tuesday, in the deadliest clashes in Gujarat since the army was deployed to keep order in early March.
“The police deliberately targeted the Muslims in (the Ahmedabad neighborhood of) Gomtipur,” said Father Cedric Prakash of Prashant, another local human rights group. “Muslims in the area said they were nowhere near the mob when the police fired at them. On Tuesday, some of the policemen were teaching women in Gomtipur area to throw missiles at Muslim houses,” he said.
Deepak Bhatia, a resident medical officer of VS Hospital, confirmed the rights groups’ claims that Muslims had been shot in the head and the abdomen. But the government said police had been following proper procedure. Father Cedric said: “If the police are not equipped with riot gear, it does not give them the license to kill.”
Some police officers said the firing on Muslims could have been in retaliation for the death Sunday of a police constable, who was hacked to death allegedly by Muslims.
