Recalling the 2002 post-Godhra riots in Gujarat, the chief of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed to investigate the violence, R.K. Raghavan, has revealed in his memoirs A Road Well Travelled that he was under immense pressure and there were “efforts to dislodge” him from the SIT because he “was politically inconvenient to those who were in great danger of being permanently eliminated from the Indian polity”. He, however, held his ground “much to the annoyance of those who were opposed to the chief minister”.
Raghavan also recalls the questioning of the then chief minister, Narendra Modi, on the various allegations made against the state administration. “We had it conveyed to his (CM’s) staff that he (Modi) had to come in person to the SIT office for this purpose, and that meeting him elsewhere would be misconstrued as a favour. He understood the spirit of our stand and readily agreed to come to the SIT office within the government complex in Gandhinagar,” he writes.
Modi’s questioning lasted nine hours. “(Ashok) Malhotra (SIT member who interrogated the CM) told me later that Modi kept his cool right through the marathon session which ended late at night. He never parried questions. Nor did he give the impression of padding up his responses,” Raghavan reveals.
When Malhotra asked him whether he would like to break for lunch, Modi initially turned down the offer. “He brought his own bottle of water and did not accept even a cup of tea from the SIT during the marathon questioning comprising a hundred odd questions.”
Interestingly, Modi wanted the questioning to go without any breaks and “it required tremendous persuasion to make him agree to a short recess”. Raghavan writes, “This was possibly Modi’s concession to the need for a respite for Malhotra rather than for himself. Such was the energy of the man.”
Raghavan also talks about Sanjeev Bhat, a controversial Gujarat cadre IPS officer who has been convicted in a murder case and is facing trial in other cases of professional misconduct. Bhat had alleged that the then chief minister, at a late-night official meeting on 28 February 2002, had directed senior police officers present at the meeting not to intervene if Hindu emotions overflowed.
“We identified every one present at the CM’s meeting. None of them said that the CM ever gave the alleged illegal direction to the police. There was also nothing to suggest that Sanjeev Bhat was present at the said meeting as claimed by him. He was too junior to have been an invitee. Further, none whose presence at the meeting was established beyond doubt told SIT that they saw Sanjeev Bhat at the meeting, held essentially to review the law and order situation arising from the Godhra train attack,” writes Raghavan, thus explaining why SIT in its report to the Supreme Court absolved Modi of the alleged illegal direction to the police.
Raghavan had served as chief of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) before being asked to head the Supreme Court-appointed SIT that probed the 2002 Gujarat riots. The book, A Road Well Travelled (Westland, Rs 599) also talks about his illustrious life and other high-profile investigations, including those relating to the Bofors scam, the 2000 cricket-match fixing case and the fodder scam.