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Eyewitness account:
‘We shall be killed tonight’
By Aziz Burney
Continued from
Then Sita Ram Pachori talks to Modi on
phone and insists on going there. Modi said that your faces and ideas are
known to everybody and hence we cannot guarantee your safety. Pachori said
that this was a direct threat from the chief minister. Shabana also talked
to Modi who told her too that your going there will further increase the
tension.
During our conversations with Modi the state health minister Ashok Bhat
and BJP’s youngest MLA, Bharat Pandya, were with us in the guest house.
They said that they could have deployed the army the previous day but did
not do so because last rites of those killed in Godhra incident are yet to
be performed. Pandya named only a few other places, including Jamalpur,
where greater tension prevailed and where Hindu-Muslim population ratio is
30 and 60 respectively. When we told him that tension is prevailing in the
whole of Ahmadabad, he admitted it and said that people are face to face
throughout the city. On being told that the former MP, Ahsan Jaffery, who
was killed the previous day, was continuously asking for security on phone
for six hours, he said that this former MP had at first fired on the
crowd.
In the meanwhile UNI Mumbai’s reporter Sushil Parekh, who had come to
Ahmadabad, enters our guest house accompanied by cameraman Uday Ivor.
Sushil’s Indica car and his luggage were set ablaze the previous evening
in Behrampura and both of them were shaken. They said that they kept
asking for shelter for four hours in the riot-hit areas but no one
obliged.
We came to know in the guest house that the worst affected people of the
city are in Al-Ameen Hospital. On my asking the health minister about the
location of this hospital, he expressed his ignorance, adding that this is
probably a private hospital.
It was here also that we came to know that in Watoajwapura area of the
city, around two hundred and fifty first class restaurants were reduced to
ashes, including Samanwar Hotel (Rs 20 million loss), Kabir Restaurant,
Sunflower, Jhajjhar Bangla, Raj Kamal, Tasty Restaurant near Police Post,
Abhilasha in Bajrapur, Topaz Hotel, Tulsi Ram Restaurant etc. etc. Burnt
ashes can be seen everywhere here.
In spite of police warning, we tried to move out of the guest house but at
that very moment a crowd of roughly two hundred people surrounded us. A
local leader, Khurshid Sayyed, came forward and said only he knows how he
had been able to reach there. He said right in the presence of dozens of
policemen there that we should not trust them. We can of course trust the
army. He requested and insisted that we should not to go to the riot-hit
areas. According to him, he did not see such a terrible and horrible
situation since 1959.
At that very moment Aaj Tak TV channel representative, Awasthi who had
come alongwith Geroge Fernandes, arrived there. He told us that his Tata
Sumo car was excessively stoned and he ran for his life. He also advised
us not to go out. Aaj Tak’s cameraman, Ashwini, was hit on the head and
was injured.
However, in spite of these warnings we went ahead and reached Police
Commissioner’s office which was at a distance of about 150 metres.
Throughout this small distance we saw gutted vehicles and horrible sights
of torched shops which silently narrate the story of the terrible but real
situation there. Amar Singh, seeing the words 'Sewa, Suraksha, Shanti’
(Service, Security, Peace) on a notice-board in the Police
Commissioner’s office, asked him: ‘where are all these things in
Gujarat?’
It is 12 midnight now. People are awake throughout the city. They are
standing in groups at different places. Slogan-shouting is going on. We
are in Police Commissioner’s office. Reporters and correspondents of
different news agencies and newspapers are also here. They are narrating
their experiences of the day. Slogans are also topic of conversation. The
slogan that is particularly being talked about is: ‘Jai Shri Ram, ho
gaya kaam' (Glory to Lord Ram: Job is done). (Translated from Urdu)
Aziz Burney, editor of the Rashtriya Sahara Urdu newspaper
published from Delhi and Lucknow, wrote this report from Ahmedabad on 2
March. q |
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