A day after the Uttar Pradesh government tabled in the Assembly a judicial commission report in connection with the 1980 Moradabad riots, Samajwadi Party leader Shivpal Singh Yadav on Wednesday questioned the motive behind making the report public 40 years after a retired judge submitted the findings on the large-scale communal riots in the State.
According to the report, “No government officer, employee or Hindu was responsible for the communal flare-up at the Eidgah and other sensitive locations. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) nowhere came on the front in these riots. The act was orchestrated by two leaders of Muslim League, Hamid Hussain alias Ajji and Shamim Ahmad. Even common Muslims had no role to play in the riots.”
Speaking to reporters, the SP general secretary said, “Why was it not made public when in the 1990s and early 2000s the BJP had its Chief Minister four times, including Kalyan Singhji and Rajnath Singhji. I haven’t gone through the report. But we want to know the BJP government’s motive behind presenting it now.”
Defending the move, Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya said, “The report will allow people to know the facts behind the riots. It’s important that the people of U.P. and India get to know the truth about who sparked the Moradabad riots.”
Submitted in 1983
The riots in Moradabad — the worst that the State had witnessed since Independence — had led to the death of at least 100 people. The then Congress government, led by CM V.P. Singh, set up a one-man inquiry commission led by Justice M.P. Saxena, a former Allahabad High Court judge, who submitted his report in 1983. In nearly 40 years, no government — including the ones run by the Congress, the BJP, the SP and the Janata Dal — made the report public until Tuesday.
