FOR ALL of us at TEHELKA, Gujarat 2002: The Truth is the most important investigation of our time. Some may argue against this but in so many ways, it is more urgent than Operation West End. Exposing corruption in the procurement of arms was critical. That the gravy chain ran long and deep — through top political echelons — was a revelation in the national interest.

But unlike West End, which dealt with greed and avarice, Gujarat is about our fundamentals. It is about ourselves. It is important because the hopelessly one-sided perpetration of violence on hapless Muslims is one of the biggest ruptures of recent times. A corrosive rupture. A nation’s shame.

We all knew that the State had conspired in the events of 2002. That the rioters — or is assassins the right word? — had political protection. But we had no faces. The perpetrators were part of large amorphous mobs. We didn’t know the details. We had no idea of the extent to which the masters and their men plotted and executed the genocide.

This investigation lays bare the anatomy of the rioters. The groundbreaking exposé — entirely the work of one gutsy, truth-hungry journalist, armed with nothing but two buttonsized cameras — takes the lid off all that was known but never established. The chilling details come first hand, from the accused themselves. The accused damn themselves — they tell us how everything, every last thing was planned and thought through. How bombs were manufactured in factories owned by members of the Sangh Parivar. How arms were smuggled in from other states. How, for the men in uniform, the colour saffron meant more than khaki. How Narendra Modi, custodian of the law, volunteered to let his state resemble a killing field.

The revelations are important because they are entirely voluntary. They were not made under any inducement. Wads of notes were not brandished to elicit them. Extraordinary stories need extraordinary methods, we often say. This extraordinary investigation, in fact, is an account of what the killers willingly narrated to the reporter who approached them as a student researching Hindu resurgence. What they said was checked and cross-checked — through field visits, through other accused.

Some were cautious, but most were willing to talk with a little bit of goading. They gave out horrifying details without batting an eyelid. Their testimonies are not just an insight into their mindsets — they are accounts that should have been in official police records — in FIRs and chargesheets. Accounts that fit different sections of the IPC. Accounts that lend themselves to the criminal procedure code. Babu Bajrangi, the Bajrang Dal zealot, confesses to how he slashed open a pregnant woman’s womb and wrenched the foetus out.

Suresh Richard, an accused in the Naroda Patiya massacre, confesses to rape. He tells you he is not lying, because he is admitting to it in the presence of his wife. He tells also of how he and his fellows killed Muslims when they heard that some of them were hiding in a gutter, hoping to escape the marauding mobs. Haresh Bhatt, a sitting MLA, similarly needs to be questioned, to be proceeded against because he reveals how rocket launchers were assembled in a factory owned by him. In over 40 hours of tape, none, save one of the protagonists, expressed any remorse. Frighteningly, they all said they would like to kill many more.

THIS INVESTIGATION is important for so many reasons, the two most important being that the Police and the Judiciary — the two pillars that ordinary Indians bank on — stand naked. Two public prosecutors are on camera acknowledging allegiance to their faith over their profession — paying homage to a warped sense of religion over nobility of duty. Details of how they are actually working to help the guilty escape the law. How they have even turned brokers and have already helped an accused — who had used a sword to cut a man to pieces — by offering money to the victim’s family.

This story is about the subversion that continues at different levels, political and judicial. The Gujarat government’s own counsel casts aspersions on the two-member Nanavati-Shah Commission. It took us six months to unearth the startling truth behind Gujarat 2002. Five years since, it is clear why the government in the state is not interested in delivering justice to its own victims.

The investigation begs attention. We need police reforms urgently. Thousands of victims — eyewitnesses to the genocide — are looking for justice to courts outside Gujarat. A Delhi High Court bench recently took suo motu notice of reports that pointed a finger at YK Sabharwal, the former chief justice of India. This investigation deserves all the attention the judiciary can pay it. It is a nation’s shame. Our collective shame.