Now,police inspector is ‘Nero playing fiddle’

The special court,however,chose not to implead Mysorewala and others whom the victims wanted arraigned as accused.

Mysorewala was the senior police inspector of Naroda Police Station when the massacre took place. “While people were flocking the streets,leaving their households inside,Shri K K Mysorewala reported to the Control Room that everything is okay. Khairiyat Hai -There is peace and happiness in Patiya area.’ It was like ‘When Rome was burning,Nero was playing fiddle’,” the order noted in its judgment.

According to the judgment,Mysorewala did not make any preventive steps on February 27,2002,and failed to make proper security arrangements in spite of the fact that 12 of the victims of Godhra carnage were from Naroda area. The court also found Mysorewala’s claim of having fired many bullets on February 28,2002 to disperse the mob as “doubtful”. “Up to March 8,2002,no substantial steps were taken to arrest the accused named in the FIR,” the court held.

“His investigation is mockery of the word ‘investigation’,” the judge said.

Two other IOs in the case,P N Barot and S S Chudasama,also came for criticism by the court,which highlighted numerous instances to show poor investigation in the case. In one of them,a 20-day-old baby was shown as 20-year-old boy whose statement the police had purportedly recorded.

Referring to the absence of Maya Kodnani’s name in the investigation done by Gujarat Police,the court said,“The court is fully aware of what kind of devices and tactics are being played in hiding the real culprits,more particularly when that real culprit is a VIP.”

“…to respect the desire of A-37 (Kodnani),police took all care to see to it that in all the statements of the eyewitnesses recorded,there has to be a common recitation which was to the effect…This was the safest way out of making the show of investigation and still not booking certain VIPs as per the design,” the court observed.

As far as conviction on the basis of mobile phone records is concerned,the court has given benefit of the doubt to Kodnani and Babu Bajrangi,whose mobile phones were actually subscribed in the names of BJP and VHP,respectively. “…Mobile numbers shown against A-18 (Bajrangi) and A-37 (Kodnani) do not stand proved beyond reasonable doubt to have been subscribed by the two accused in 2002 or that they were used on the date of occurrence by the accused,” the court observed.

In another significant observation,the court dismissed the prosecution theory as “totally false” that Bajrangi had slit open the womb of a pregnant woman Kausar Bano with a sword and put the foetus on the tip. The court relied on the deposition of the doctor who carried out the post mortem of Kausar that the foetus was in her body and that no injury was caused to it.