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Role Of The Police

‘Their Eyes And Mouths Were Shut’
Babu Bajrangi

Transcript: BABU BAJRANGI

The Bajrang Dal zealot says the police could have prevented his hordes from entering Naroda Patiya, but didn’t

SEPTEMBER 1, 2007
Nobody can do what Narendrabhai has done in Gujarat. If I didn’t have Narendrabhai’s support, we would not have been able to avenge Godhra... because the police was standing right in front of us, seeing all that was happening, but they had shut their eyes and mouths... At that time, had the police wanted, they would never have let us in... There was just one entry, like a housing society has, and then Patiya begins... If they wanted to stop us, there were 50 of them there, they could have stopped us... We had good support from the police... because of Narendrabhai... and that is because whatever happened in Gujarat, happened for the best. We got some relief from these people [the Muslims]... they had got so high and daring...

• • •

The Muslims kept making calls to the police, kept running to the police… They had one man called Salem… supposed to be a sort of Naroda Patiya dada… he got into a police jeep… got right inside... I myself caught him and dragged him out… The cops said kill him, if he’s left alive, he’ll testify against us… He was taken a little way away and finished off right there… If the bastard had lived, he would have said he’d climbed into a police jeep and was thrown out, things like that…

• • •

[By the end, there were about 700- 800 bodies.] They were all removed… The Commissioner came that night and said that if there were so many dead at one place, it would create trouble for him… So he had the corpses picked up and dumped all over Ahmedabad… When they were brought to the Civil Hospital for the post-mortem, they were said to be from this place or that…


• • •

AUGUST 10, 2007
At 2.30 that night, I called the police inspector [Mysorewala]... He said don’t come here [to the station]... There were dekho to [shoot at sight] orders against me... Wherever Babu Bajrangi was found, he was to be shot... He told me to run away... our Mysorewala... He said he couldn’t do a thing for me... I wasn’t even to tell anyone he’d called… But even so, he sent a rider to my house... you can imagine how my children felt at that time...


• • •

[Four months later] Narendrabhai told me... there was a lot of pressure on him... The media, TV, so much coverage... Babu Bajrangi is a goonda... Laloo complained in Parliament about my not being caught... So Narendrabhai asked me to surrender... I said, alright saheb, if you tell me to, I will give myself up... I surrendered near Gandhinagar... it was all a big drama... all a drama... the police, the Crime Branch, had been told I would be passing through that area... PP Pandey saheb, who was [joint] commissioner in the Crime Branch then, he was there too and some 12 or 13 cars came... These people waited on the road from Biloda to Gandhinagar... they checked a few cars... I had to land up... it was part of the act... If I’d gone straight to the Crime Branch, the media and the NGOs would have ripped me apart... It was all a drama... they caught me, tied me up with rope... all drama... They told me they were tying me up just for show...

Nov 03, 2007

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