AHMEDABAD: India’s government has fired Sanjiv Bhatt, a senior police officer who accused Narendra Modi of being complicit in deadly anti-Muslim riots in the prime minister’s home state of Gujarat in 2002.
Bhatt told newsmen on Thursday that he had received a letter terminating his employment of 27 years after being found guilty of indiscipline. He was suspended from duty in 2011 after filing a petition in the Supreme Court implicating Modi, then chief minister of Gujarat, and his government in the 2002 violence.
In his affidavit, Bhatt said that Modi had ordered police to allow rioters to vent their anger against the state’s Muslim community after the deaths of nearly 60 Hindu pilgrims in a train fire that was blamed at the time on Muslims.
Modi, who took power last year after a landslide election victory, has always denied any responsibility for the riots which left more than 1,000 people dead, most of them Muslims.
