The photograph of Qutubuddin Ansari, a Gujarat tailor, begging for life that became the face of the riots

New Delhi, Oct. 25: Five years after the Gujarat riots, men accused of the violence against Muslims have admitted on camera their individual roles and revealed how Narendra Modi protected them, the magazine Tehelka claimed today.

The exposé has come less than two months before the chief minister returns to the people to defend the mandate he had secured in 2002 soon after the violence.

In a six-month-long sting operation, the magazine’s investigators captured senior Sangh parivar leaders claiming how they had “avenged” the Godhra incident in which 59 people on a train were burnt to death. The massacre that followed — around 1,000 were killed — was conducted with the blessings of Modi and other senior ministers, they claimed.

“He had given us three days... to do whatever we could. He said he would not give us time after that. He said this openly. After three days, he asked us to stop and everything came to a halt,” Modi aide Haresh Bhatt, then a Bajrang Dal leader and now the BJP MLA from Godhra, said.

Babu Bajrangi, the main accused in the Naroda Patiya massacre, said Modi had “changed judges thrice” to get him out on bail. “He made everything all right, otherwise who would have had the strength…it was his hand all the way,” Bajrangi said.

About his role in Naroda Patiya, the worst-affected suburb of Ahmedabad, Bajrangi said on camera: “We organised everything…mobilised a team…chased them (Muslims) and were able to scare them into a huge khadda (pit). There we surrounded them and finished everything off.”

Bajrangi said the mob “hacked” and “burnt” the victims.

He said he called Gordhan Zadaphia, minister of state for home at that time, on the evening of the February 28 massacre to inform him about how many people the mob led by him had killed. “He told me to leave Gujarat and go into hiding,” Bajrangi added.

Zadaphia is now a dissident out to topple Modi.

Bajrangi also revealed how Modi helped him evade the law after a shoot-at-sight order was issued against him. “Narendrabhai kept me at Gujarat Bhavan at Mount Abu for four-and-a-half months. After that, I did whatever Narendrabhai told me to do. If I did not have the support of Narendrabhai, we would not have been able to avenge (Godhra),” he said.

Bajrangi has also revealed how P.C. Pandey, Ahmedabad’s police chief during the riots, helped destroy evidence of the massacre at Naroda Patiya.

“By the end of the evening, there were about 700-800 bodies. They were all removed. The commissioner came that night and said if there were so many dead at one place, it would create trouble for him. So he had the corpses picked up and dumped all over Ahmedabad. When they were brought to the civil hospital for the post-mortem, they were said to be from this place or that.”

Another Naroda Patiya accused Suresh Richard has corroborated Bajrangi’s claims that the police were hand in glove with the mob. “The police were with us….They were shooting right in front of us…. They must have killed 70 or 80 or more...didn’t even spare women,” Richard said.

Anil Pandya, the counsel for the Gujarat government before the Nanavati-Shah commission investigating the riot cases, said: “Modi came and gave oral instructions to the police to remain with the Hindus.”