Vengeful Modi

The Gujarat government has acted true to its record of persecution of persons who are critical of its policies and actions by arresting IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt. Bhatt’s fault was that he had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court accusing chief minister Narendra Modi of complicity in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots. He had stated that Modi had, in a meeting of officials convened after the riots broke out, given a signal to the officials not to take prompt action to control the situation. Bhatt had also submitted an affidavit in the court implicating some officials in the Modi administration in a case pertaining the murder of BJP leader Haren Pandya. Modi’s culpability is yet to be judicially decided but to harass a person who had made an inconvenient observation, accepting full responsibility for it in the court, is intolerance and vengefulness.

The officer has now been arrested on the charge that he had forced a constable to file a false affidavit against Modi. He had already been suspended and charge-sheeted for his statements critical of or inconvenient to the government. Bhatt is not the first government official who is being persecuted for going public on the government’s role in the riots. A DIG rank officer, Rahul Sharma, was charge-sheeted for passing on records of calls made during the riots to the commission which was enquiring into it. Ironically, he was an officer who had taken steps to ensure that there were no riots in the district which he was in charge of in 2002. There are other officials and human rights and civil liberty activists who have been hounded for trying to bring out the truth about the Modi government’s conduct pertaining to some controversial incidents like encounter killings and during the riots. It should be noted that none of these officials violated the official code of conduct and made their statements only in legitimate and legal forums like courts or enquiry commissions. To victimise them for their rightful actions is to send out the message that those who did not toe the government’s line and acted according to their conscience or call of duty would be punished.

Governments often try to cover up and suppress their misdeeds. Whistleblowers within the administration have a duty to expose them. Gujarat has had quite a few such conscientious and upright officers and hopefully Bhatt will not be the last of them.