Sardarpura, 50 km from Mehsana town and not far from Vadnagar, home of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, had been declared a Samras village, part of one of the first schemes launched by Modi after he took charge in 2001. Under the scheme, a village could appoint its sarpanch unanimously without an election. In Sardarpura, sarpanch Kachra Tribhovan Patel and former sarpanch Kanu Joitaram Patel were among the accused. Both were among...

-Express News Service Nadeem Saiyed, a key witness to the Naroda Patiya massacre during the 2002 Gujarat Riots, was brutally killed on the main street of Juhapura on Saturday. He was stabbed 25 times, just steps away from the anti-terrorism group headquarters. Two Juhapura residents, Firdos Mullah and Mushir Ahmed, have been booked for murder and conspiracy. Saiyed’s father named them along with several others, accusing them of ordering his killing. A police informer...

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged instructions to his officials to allow Hindus to vent their anger after the Godhra attack may not amount to conspiracy to murder but could form the basis of prosecution under various Sections including 153 A, 153 B, 505 and 166 of the IPC.   These deal with statements promoting enmity between communities, imputations and assertions prejudicial to national integration, statements conducing to public mischief, and public...

The report of Raju Ramachandran, the amicus curiae in the Zakia Jafri case, has laid the ground for Narendra Modi to be charge-sheeted for his alleged role in the 2002 anti-Muslim Gujarat pogrom. The report is still confidential, though it has now been shared with the Special Investigation Team set up by the Supreme Court to investigate and prosecute cases stemming from the 2002 violence in which more than 1200 persons...

Rudrapur, an industrial town in Uttarakhand, witnesses large-scale rioting and clashes of a communal nature. THE Garhwal and Kumaon regions, which constitute the tiny hill State of Uttarakhand, were totally free of communal disturbances even when the entire country was in the grip of tension following the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 and the Mumbai blasts in 1993. These regions had always maintained communal peace. But on...