Prayers Mark 10th Anniversary Of Riots In India

AHMADABAD, India (AP) — Hundreds of survivors of deadly religious riots gathered in western India on Monday to mark the 10th anniversary of the country’s worst sectarian violence in recent years, as rights activists blasted the local government for delaying justice.

On Feb. 27, 2002, a train fire in Gujarat state killed 60 Hindu pilgrims. Muslims were blamed for the fire and weeks of rioting followed. More than 1,000 people, almost all Muslim, were killed as Hindu mobs rampaged through towns and villages. Tens of thousands were left homeless as rioters set fire to Muslim homes and businesses.

The survivors began Monday’s ceremony by praying for those killed, and then read verses from the Quran near the burnt-out shells of the damaged homes. Others hung prayers and wishes, written on little slips of paper, on the branches of a tree.

Rights groups and survivors accuse the state government, controlled by the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, of not doing enough to stop the violence and even stoking it.

The religious violence was among India’s worst since its independence from Britain in 1947.

“Instead of prosecuting senior state and police officials implicated in the atrocities, the Gujarat authorities have engaged in denial and obstruction of justice,” Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, said in a statement over the weekend.

State government officials have always denied any allegations of obstruction and wrongdoing.

“All these years, there has not been the slightest hint or trace of remorse,” Cedric Prakash, a Jesuit priest and rights activist in Gujarat, said Monday.

“Are these people not real? They still remember the horrors,” Prakash said by telephone from Gulberg Society, a middle-class neighborhood in Ahmadabad, Gujarat’s main city. At least 69 Muslims were killed there when a mob set homes on fire during the rioting.

Near Gulberg Society’s still-damaged homes, activists have hung photographs of those killed in the violence and those who are still missing.

Human Rights Watch said in its statement that while investigations in the train attack happened rapidly, investigations into the anti-Muslim riots that followed were “deliberately slowed down or simply not pursued.”

The rights group accused Gujarat’s top elected official, Narendra Modi, a senior Bharatiya Janata leader and one of the party’s top candidates for prime minister, should it win national elections, of failing to conduct serious investigations and obstructing justice.

It was only after India’s top court appointed a special investigation team in 2009 that two top leaders, Maya Kodnani, a minister in the state Cabinet, and Jaideep Patel, a leader of the hard-line Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or World Hindu Council, were arrested for leading mobs that attacked Muslims during the riots. Both are still on trial.