ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION
Dear friends,
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information concerning a concocted criminal case registered against a journalist in India, Mr. Rahul Singh, for reporting a mass grave in Panderwada village within Panchmahal district of Gujarat. In December 2005, Rahul came to know about the mass grave in Panderwada from the local human rights activists. The mass grave reportedly had the remains of 21 victims of the 2002 Gujarat genocide. Rahul reported the news about the exhumation of human remains by the victims’ family members through Sahara, a TV news channel in December 2005.
The mass grave exposed the criminal nexus between the state administration led by the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), the state police and other fundamentalist Hindu political groups operating in India, particularly the persons in the state administration who colluded with the Hindu fundamentalists to carryout the genocide. Eight years later, the Gujarat State Police have now registered a criminal case against Rahul accusing him that he has aided the tampering of evidence in a criminal case and has broadcast reports that could have caused communal hatred. Mr. J. K. Bhat, who was the Superintendent of Police (SP) of Panchmahal district when 21 bodies were buried in the mass grave in an alleged attempt to hide the evidence of genocide, is now the Inspector General of Police stationed at Vadodhara who is investigating the case registered against Rahul and five other accused persons, a background that seriously challenges the state police’s motives of accusing Rahul of a crime that he has not committed. Rahul, after leaving Sahara is now working with Headlines Today in New Delhi.
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(Thanks to Mukul Dube)