JOIN USRetired additional director general of police R B Sreekumar has claimed that the then additional chief secretary (Home) Ashok Narayan had told him that chief minister Narendra Modi had issued an oral order for immediate release of the Hindus arrested in connection with the 2002 communal riots in the state.
Sreekumar on Thursday filed yet another affidavit, his ninth so far, before the G T Nanavati – Akshay Mehta judicial inquiry commission probing into the Godhra train carnage and the post-Godhra communal riots. He has now appended transcript of a taped version of his interaction with Narayan in an informal meeting on August 20, 2004.
Sreekumar said he had sought a meeting with Narayan only to refresh his memory about his interaction and interface with the state home department officials during his tenure as the chief of the state intelligence branch from April 9 to September 19, 2002. He then visited Narayan as he was due to appear for cross-examination before the commission on August 30, 2004.
According to Sreekumar , during the course of the conversation when he was complaining about the subversion of the criminal justice system in the state during the riots that led to numerous complaints and petitions in various courts right upto the Supreme Court, Narayan told him that the chief minister had asked for the release of the Hindus arrested in riot cases.
Claiming that Narayan’s revelation only corroborated his earlier narration about “numerous illegal verbal orders given by the chief minister”, and other political leaders as he had mentioned in his earlier affidavits, Sreekumar said he suggested to the ACS (home) then, that he should report the matter to the commission, to which Narayan disagreed stating that there was no way to prove that Modi had issued any such order.
Sreekumar claimed even after their conversation was over, Narayan had confirmed it to him that his earlier intelligence report about measures for improving the criminal justice systems, appointments of the special public prosecutors, many of whom were found to Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists or its sympathizers, for the trial of the riot cases and such other measures was “ridiculed at” by the chief minister with the comment that his suggestions “deserved to be put in the waste paper basket.”