Thread by @SaffronDiaries

Thread: The Horrific Killing of Ehsan Jafri in the #GulbargMassacre
On 28 February 2002 Ehsan Jafri was gruesomely murdered by a feverish mob. Slaughtered along with him were around seventy women, children and men who had taken shelter with the man....

...whom they had believed was influential enough to save their lives from a colossal armed mob baying for blood.
But he was dragged away by the horde, his limbs were cut off from his body before he was burned. His family could not even locate his remains.

He was a renowned poet, labor leader and politician who was killed in infamous #Gulbarg Society massacre in Gujarat 2002 riots. #Modi, then the CM of Gujarat, was accused of doing little to stop the anti-Muslim riots -an allegation he has always denied.

The year 2002 was when large parts of Gujarat were ripped apart by one of the most brutal and bloody communal massacres since India attained freedom. Following the death by burning of fifty-eight Hindus returning from Ayodhya in a train compartment in a small railway station...,

...#Godhra, a malign tempest of hate violence engulfed twenty out of the twenty-five districts of Gujarat for several weeks, persisting in some places for months, as state authorities did little to stem or control it.

Ehsan Jafri was born in Burhanpur. In 1935 his father Dr. Allahbaksh Jafri moved to Ahmedabad. He was elected General Secretary of the Progressive Editor's Union. Around this time, he also completed his law degree and started practising as an attorney in #Ahmedabad.

He joined the #Congress Party of #IndiraGandhi and was heading the city unit by 1972. In 1977, after the emergency when the party was routed in most Indian states, Ehsan managed to win the Ahmedabad seat and became a parliamentarian in the 6th Lok Sabha.

Zakia Jafri was firmly convinced that her husband died because of a conspiracy that went right to the top of the state administration, beginning with Chief Minister @narendramodi, and including senior ministers, police officers and leaders of Sangh organisations closely...

..associated with the ruling party. Almost two decades after the carnage, Jafri, now 83, is back in India’s top court, challenging the findings of a Special Investigation Team report, which cleared then-Gujarat Chief #Modi, now country’s PM, as well as other senior govt figures

The petitioners claimed #Gujarat’s political leaders at the time conspired to allow the riots to happen so that #Hindus could vent their anger over the #SabarmatiExpress deaths. #Modi and the officials have always denied any wrongdoing.

As per #ArundhatiRoy, #Congress ally the Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind alleged in August 2003 that Jafri had in fact called Sonia Gandhi for help! The Times of India reported on 9 August 2003 in an article titled: “Congress silent on cadres linked to #Gujarat riots...”

....that the JUH secretary N A Farooqui says: “The Congress has committed sins of omission and commission during the riots. Former MP Ehsan Jaffri had called up Sonia Gandhi for help. She didn’t take a strong stand in her subsequent visit to #Gujarat.

The local bodies were mostly headed by the #Congress which could have done a lot for relief and rehabilitation, but it was all left to the NGOs.” As late as August 2003, no claim of Jafri calling #Modi is made, in fact JUH claimed that Jafri had called #SoniaGandhi!

Also Roy says-“His phone calls to the Director-General of Police, the Police Commissioner, the Chief Secretary, the Additional Chief Secretary (Home) were ignored. According to FIR of the incident filed by police inspector K.G. Erda...,

..the violent mob started attacking Muslim owned establishments in the morning and were dispersed by the police. However, they reassembled around 1 PM armed with swords, sticks, pipe and kerosene. The mob had blown up gas cylinders to blast through walls in the #Gulbarg Society.

The report also mentions that the rioters were guided by voter lists and computer printouts with the addresses of Muslim-owned properties, information obtained from the local municipal administration. This claim was repeated by at least five #Muslim witnesses...

....presented before the Nanavati-Mehta Commission. #Chamanpura is in central #Ahmedabad and barely a kilometre from the pole station, and less than 2 km from the Police Commissioner's office. Believing the area to be safe given Jafri's presence, many #Muslims in the...

...area had gathered in his compound. Around 10:30 in the morning, the #Ahmedabad Commissioner of Police, P.C. Pandey, personally visited Jafri and apparently assured him that police reinforcement would be coming. In the next five hours, Jafri and top ...

....#Congress officials of the state repeatedly kept calling the police and other government officials requesting safe transport for the residents, but no help arrived. The FIR further stated that the police station had 130 policemen on duty that day....,

....and were well armed with teargas shells. However, no one was deployed to disperse the crowd, despite #EhsanJafri and top Congress politicians repeatedly contacting the Director General of Police, Police Commissioner, the Mayor, Leader of Opposition in....

....the State and the Parliament, and other top government officials. Jafri had a lifelong interest in literature. While at school, he had brought out an Urdu magazine.

He kept writing even during his years of Labour union struggle. In 1996, he published his volume of poetry titled Qandeel ("Lantern") in Urdu.

References
scroll.in/article/102835…
Book: "Undercover: My Journey into the Darkness of Hindutva" by Ashish Khetan
indiatvnews.com/news/india/guj…

@ashoswai @RahulGandhi @priyankagandhi