A sensational Tehelka sting published this week surreptitiously filmed Indian politicians boasting about killing Muslims in the Gujarat pogrom. One of the conspirators, a Bajrang Dal leader, hoists himself on his own petard:

His confession is horrific (NSFW):

The cylinders were [the Muslims']… Whichever house we entered, we just grabbed the cylinder and fired at it, and, dhadak, they exploded… We had guns in any case… I can’t tell you what a good time it was… We rammed an entire tanker into [a mosque]… We drove a whole diesel tanker in and then set [the mosque] on fire…

There is a distance of about half a kilometre between Naroda [Patiya] and Naroda Gaon… We did a lot at both places… must have butchered not less than… Then we dumped the corpses into a well…

Hacked, burnt, set on fire, many things were done… many… We believe in setting them on fire because these bastards say they don’t want to be cremated, they’re afraid of it, they say this and that will happen to them…

Arrey hamari FIR me likha gaya hai… ek woh pregnant thi, usko to humne chir diya thha b*******d sala… Unko dikhaya ki kya hota hai… ki hum log ko tumne maara to hum tumko kya pratikaar de sakte hain… hum khichdi kadhi wale nahin hai [It has been written in my FIR… there was this pregnant woman, I slit her open, sisterf****r… Showed them what's what… what kind of revenge we can take if our people are killed… I am no feeble rice-eater]… [Link]

The Muslims kept making calls to the police, kept running to the police… They had one man called Salem… he got into a police jeep… got right inside… I myself caught him and dragged him out… The cops said kill him, if he’s left alive, he’ll testify against us… He was taken a little way away and finished off right there…

That day, it was like what happened between Pakistan and India… There were bodies everywhere… it was a sight to be seen, but it wasn’t something to be filmed, in case it got into someone’s hands… There was a video-wala there, some mediawala, we set him on fire too… Lots of those miyas [Muslims] deceived us… They’d chant Jai Mata Di and get away… that happened too… they’d put tilaks on their foreheads and shout Jai Shri Ram, Jai Mata Di…

What I say is this: the VHP is an organisation… a Hindu organisation… Our politics should be limited to killing Muslims‘Our politics should be limited to killing Muslims’, beating them up…

How do you feel after you have killed Muslims…

Maza aata hai na, saheb [I enjoy it]… I came back after I killed them them, called up the home minister and went to sleep… I felt like Rana Pratap, that I had done something like Maharana Pratap… I’d heard stories about him, but that day I did what he did myself. [Link]

Editor Tarun Tejpal wrote:

… the genocidal killings took place in the heart of urban India in an era of saturation media coverage — television, print, web — and not under the cloak of secrecy in an unreachable place… the men who presided over the carnage were soon after elected to power not despite their crimes but seemingly precisely because of them (making a mockery of the idea of the inevitable morality of the collective)… there continues to be no trace of remorse, no sign of penitence for the blood-on-the-hands that — if Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky are to be believed — is supposed to haunt men to their very graves…

… the beast within us could still tear us apart — as has happened in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar — if we do not do what we need to do, if we do not look into the mirror and fix our face…. it certainly cannot be the vacuous grin of the shining Indian. [Link]

A summary of their findings:

The VHP and the Bajrang Dal in Gujarat were indistinguishable from terror outfits, manufacturing and distributing bombs, rocket launchers and firearms across the state [Link]

Modi himself arranged for Babu Bajrangi, the prime accused in the Naroda Patiya case, to stay at Gujarat Bhavan in Mount Abu, and transferred two judges to help Bajrangi get bail…

Since the police were in control all over Gujarat, Modi instructed them to side with the Hindus, thus giving the rioters a free hand for three days. [Link]

Narendra Modi visited Godhra on the day of the burning of coach S-6 of the Sabarmati Express. His outburst provided the first sign to Sangh workers that the time to corner the Muslims had come A strategy was devised on how to shield the attackers from the law

That very night, top BJP and Sangh leaders met at Ahmedabad, Vadodara and Godhra, and gave the green signal for an all-out assault on Muslims across the state

A strategy was devised on how to shield the attackers from the law after the riots. Prominent lawyers were briefed and senior police officers taken into confidence. The cadres were told Modi was squarely behind them…

From the very outset, the police played partisan, often joining the mobs. Officers who tried to do their duty found their hands tied. The complicity was led by then Ahmedabad Commissioner PC Pandey, who ensured compliance by a swathe of junior officers

Weapons, from bombs to guns to trishuls, were either manufactured and distributed by Sangh workers themselves, or smuggled through Sangh channels from all over India. The Bajrang Dal and the VHP already had a large cache of firearms and daggers

BJP and Sangh leaders led the bloodthirsty mobs through Ahmedabad’s bylanes, Sabarkantha’s villages, Vadodara’s localities. The police stood guard to the mayhem

BJP MLA Mayaben Kodnani drove around Ahmedabad’s Naroda locality all day, directing the mobs. VHP leaders Atul Vaid and Bharat Teli did the same at the Gulbarg Housing Society. None of them ever went to jail…

Babu Bajrangi reveals he collected 23 revolvers from Hindus in Naroda Patiya. He called VHP general secretary Jaideep Patel 11 times and informed Gordhan Zadaphia, the then minister of state for home, about the death toll… [Link]

The Ahmedabad government has blocked the incriminating videos from being broadcast, and the excuses are flowing. But it’s out now — the videos are on YouTube in all their glory, free for any Indian to see:

Television channels ordered off the air after the airing of footage allegedly exposing government involvement in the 2002 mass killings of Muslims resumed broadcasting yesterday… “As long as they are not telecasting the communally sensitive programme, and others of the same category, they are welcome to resume transmission at any given time…” [Link]

Pandya added that he had been simply reading out from a script handed to him when he was captured on hidden camera. Pandya could not explain, however, how he failed to see something amiss in a script, which used names of judges identical with those he was appearing before. [Link]

The reporter talks about going undercover:

… there was the other world, where I was Piyush Aggarwal, a member of the “Parivar”, a Hindu zealot, a religious fanatic, with only murderers and rapists for friends… another car pulled up and two men got out. Bhatt and these men went into the house and told me to wait. I had two spy-cams on me and all it needed to blow my cover was a body frisk…

Mid-way, he received a phone call. After disconnecting it, he turned to me and said he had just been informed that a journalist from Delhi was carrying out a sting operation on the Sabarmati Express incident and that he had been told to be careful. Oh, really, I said, with a straight face… [Link]

The videos confirm what we’ve already known. Will public shame at last force India to move these murderers from government house to jailhouse? Seriously, what’s the matter with Gujarat?

Read the whole thing.

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