Gujarat Files : Anatomy Of A Cover Up - Rana Ayyub

One hell of a book. I have read many reports on Gujarat riots but this one is chilling and to think of how a group of people can control everything in the state is scary.  The author Rana Ayyub has done some wonderful reporting about Gujarat Riots at Tehelka and she is the main reason for the arrest of Amit Shah ,then home minister of Gujarat.

The author went undercover for eight months to investigate about the riots and encounter killings. The author along with her friends conducted sting operations on most of the officers who were involved. All are high profile officers. Most of the details are well known - discussed and written widely. These sting operations confirms many of the details came out after riots. The common thread in that connects all these officers testimonial was Amit Shah.

“You know this Haren Pandya case is like a volcano. Once the truth is out, Modi will go home. He will be jailed, not go home. He will be in prison.”

One of the highlight of this book is the exposure of  how the government used Dalit officers for 'fake' encounters and threw them out after -like "use and throw". Officer Priyadarshi  says “I mean a Dalit officer can be asked to commit cold-blooded murder because he (apparently) has no self-respect, no ideals. Upper castes in the Gujarat police are the ones in (everyone’s) good books.”  Another officer Pandey says "there were riots in 85, 87, 89, 92 and most of the times the Hindus got a beating. And the Muslims got an upperhand. So this time in 2002, it had to happen, it was the retaliation of Hindus."  The book clearly shows the communal divide among the police departments.

Its remarkable for a Muslim woman to pretend like a Hindu girl (Maithili Tyagi) , wearing all those dresses with hidden cameras and asking some uncomfortable questions to those high profile officers - an ode to investigative journalism.  Rana Ayyub says she will handover the materials collected to investigators if asked.

Muslims were more dominant. In 2002, more Muslims were killed. See with Muslims it’s like this. Especially in 2002 it was like this, Muslims were killing Hindus all these years so whatever happened in 2002 was a retaliation for all those years of being beaten by Muslims. And everybody across the world created havoc. They did not see the situation in which the Hindus were killed.

I finished the book in less than three hours, it was like reading a crime thriller. The language is simple and engaging.  I felt very sad for those courageous police officers who were put in a moral dilemma- those who toed the line were rewarded and others were thrown out. Its like in movies -complete disregard to law and order by the top police and government officials.

The book does not give any idea on which those unfortunate events happened, rather it gives thoughts of those who involved in it -in their own words and leave the readers to judge. Definitely things were not as clear as one would like to believe in events during and after the riots and encounters. I believe the author may have some more information which she do not want reveal at this point of time ? Also anyone working behind this author because one cannot ask all the questions without some kind of backup? Whatever it may be this is a brilliant book.

A chilling read !