Jafri claimed that high-ranking authorities, including Narendra Modi, the chief minister at the time, were complicit in the anti-Muslim riots that occurred in the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002.
At the age of 86, her husband, a Congress party member, was one among 69 people slain inside the Muslim neighborhood of Gulbarg Society in the Indian state of Gujarat.
Official government statistics show that during the more than week-long violence in Gujarat, where Hindu mobs went on the rampage, at least 790 Muslims were killed, 223 more were reported missing, and another 2,500 were injured.
However, rights groups have reported rapes and child murders, and they place the figure significantly higher.
According to Human Rights Watch, the attacks on Muslims were a part of a coordinated effort by Hindu nationalist organizations to incite and take advantage of intercommunal tensions in order to advance the BJP’s political rule movement, which is backed locally by militant organizations that function with impunity and under state sponsorship.
“Larger conspiracy”
Zakia Jafri undertook a long legal battle to get key political officials accountable, according to the English daily Hindustan Times.
According to Jafri, there was a “larger conspiracy” involving high-ranking authorities, including Narendra Modi, the Gujarat Chief Minister at the time.
She maintained that the violence was made worse by policed collusion and institutional inactivity.
She also charged the state government for postponing the army’s deployment, which might have allowed the riots to be subdued sooner.
Jafri pleaded for as charge sheet against Narendra Modi, the current prime minister of India, and other others she thought were accountable.
The Gujarat government was directed to reopen the matter by the Supreme Court in 2007.
Later, Jafri filed a plea in the magistrate court, Gujarat High Court, and Supreme Court challenging the special investigation team’s clean sheet that was granted to 63 individuals, including Modi.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT) was established by the Indian Supreme Court in 2011 to look into the circumstances surrounding the riots.
“Clean chit”
In February 2012, the SIT filed a closure report.
This report essentially gave Narendra Modi and 63 others a clean sheet by concluding that there was “no prosecutable evidence” against them.
The conclusions were predicated on the absence of hard proof to back up the allegations of collusion and willful inaction on the part of the state apparatus.
While critics and the families of the victims, including Jafri, expressed sadness and persisted in seeking justice through other legal channels, Modi supporters saw it as a vindication.
The case brought to light the difficulties in dealing with acts of community violence and the difficulties in holding influential people responsible in such situations.
The Guardian claims that the US, UK, and some European countries de facto banned Modi from traveling as a result of the violence in 2002.
Modi was denied a US visa in 2005 because he was implicated in a grave religious freedom violation.
India: The Modi Question, a 2023 BBC program about Prime Minister Narendra Modi, detailed a British government investigation into the carnage in Gujarat in 2002.
According to the study, the Hindu nationalist group Vishva Hindi Parishad “planned, possibly in advance”, the violence.
Additionally, it accuses the Gujarat state government of being directly at fault, pointing to then-chief minister Narendra Modi.
In India, the documentary was prohibited.
