After the Ides of March 2002, the heat is on in Gujarat after five years, not raging but smouldering quietly. This time it is not due to any national television channel or the English press, neither the Left nor the Congress, or because of any perceived Outsider — the usual suspects for self-styled Gujarati Gaurav. The state is afire with controversies, all homemade Gujarati.

First Gujaratis learned that lions are being poached in the Gir sanctuary while politicos and officials paraded their increasing numbers. Then came the scandal of tribal BJP MP Babubhai Katara, hailing from one of the 100 poorest districts of country, arrested on an international flight in an immigration scam. The hat-trick has been completed by Gujarat government’s admission in the Supreme Court that their star cop carried out a fake encounter — and that the victim’s wife Kausar Bi was burnt and killed too — even as BJP spin masters find it difficult to conjure up some criminal antecedents for Sohrabuddin Sheikh. There is also the killing of Tulsiram Prajapati in the same case.

The Sohrabuddin case has the Gujaratis hooked as never before. More than the street, the bureaucracy and police ranks are watching it closely. The dramatic arrest of D.G. Vanjhara who enjoyed unfettered political patronage, has rattled the police force.

The developments have Gujaratis riveted to every small bit of news. The stories are being recounted — from newspreads in competitive exclusives to editorials in the leading Gujarati dailies — in Divya Bhaskar and Gujarat Samachar and Sandesh. It is these Gujarati dailies — the latter duo were indicted by the Editors’ Guild for their inflammatory and biased coverage during the 2002 riots — that are telling the stories of how Vanjhara fancied himself as an actor in Gujarati films, or speculating on how Modi could let the law take its course to keep up his righteous posture as a good administrator. And why should a housewife — even if she were to be somehow proved to be married to a criminal — be killed in this manner, they ask.

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