From the night of February 28, when brutal and systematic attacks against targeted sections of the Muslims population in Ahmedabad city began, distressed residents were shepherded out of their homes and localities, often in hired buses, in the dead of the night by community leaders. Over night, relief camps came up in the city and by March 5 a staggering 98,000 refugees were housed there. Even by the admission of the district magistrate and collector of Ahmedabad, there were 66,000 refugees in these camps. In none of these efforts was any state presence visible.

By March 1, a similar situation was observed in over one dozen districts of Gujarat. Independent sources show that outside Ahmedabad, as many as 76,000 refugees were housed in camps all over the state. Official figures put this amount at about 25,000. In any event, even by the state government’s own assessment, at least 91,000 persons were displaced as a direct result of the carnage. Independent assessments put these at closer to 1,74,000 refugees in the state of Gujarat after the first flush of brutal violence; a staggering figure by any standards. Besides, not all the survivors moved into camps — many went to the homes of their relatives and so on. Including them in the calculation, independent estimates put the total number of displaced Muslims in Gujarat at not less that 2,50,000.

In the days following the first bout of brutal violence, agents of the state, notably the collectors/district magistrates of Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Mehsana, Himmatnagar, Anand, Sabarkantha, Banaskantha, Bharuch and Ankleshwar districts, as also the officials of some police stations, obstructed truckloads of privately mobilised relief material — milk, foodgrains, etc. — from reaching the camps. Thereafter, the same officials harassed and penalised the refugees by, among other things, not giving them sufficient food. The conduct of these IAS and IPS officials calls for strong penal action.

The Tribunal is greatly concerned and outraged by the fact that only the leadership of the Muslim community was involved in the running of the relief camps because others did not come forward. Though some non–Muslim NGOs did contribute substantial amounts of aid to these relief camps right until August, the vast bulk of relief assistance to the refugees came from the community itself.

For days and weeks, the Gujarat government adamantly refused to register the relief camps and denied relief assistance from state coffers. In blatant and brazen contrast to the Gujarat state’s attitude to the earthquake victims just one year earlier, when the ghastly earthquake of January 26, 2001 rocked the state, this time neither the Gujarat government nor the government of India applied to the UN and other international agencies for relief and rehabilitation measures.

Equally, the Tribunal notes with concern and anguish that an insignificant number of international aid agencies came forward in the case of the Gujarat carnage, to help the victims. Given the scale of the state-perpetrated violence and given the response of international aid agencies to such carnages in other areas in the past, it was incumbent on them to provide relief and rehabilitation assistance to all those displaced and dispossessed by the communal carnage in Gujarat, without discrimination.

Similarly, the fact that major national newspapers which, during such calamities in the past, have always set up independent relief funds, did not do so in the context of Gujarat 2002, speaks for the silence and complicity that surrounds relief and rehabilitation of the survivors of the Gujarat carnage.

Six relief camps had to approach the Gujarat High Court (special civil applications 3773 of 2002) through a writ petition — supported by the Citizens for Justice and Peace — and a senior advocate had to be flown down from Mumbai for arguments, before the Gujarat government gave an assurance in court that it assumes responsibility for providing adequate relief to the camps. Justice Pradeep PB Majmudar delivered the order on this writ petition on April 22, 2002.

The first time that the Shri Modi condescended to visit the Shah–e–Alam Relief Camp in Ahmedabad city was a full month after the carnage broke out, on April 4. As recently as September 9, at Becharaji, Mehsana, during his Gujarat Gaurav Yatra, none other than the chief minister made a shocking public declaration: ‘‘What should we do? Run relief camps for them? Do we want to open baby producing centres?’’

Again on May 31, a public interest litigation (special civil application number 5311 of 2002) had to be filed in the Gujarat High Court by the Citizens for Justice and Peace and Communalism Combat to elicit an assurance from the state that relief camps would not be forcibly closed down. On June 4, the petitioners obtained an oral assurance from the government pleader that there would be no closure of the camps at least until June 30, 2002. It was on this precise date, that the state government began exerting pressure on camps and threatened penal measures against camp managers, if they did not ‘voluntarily’ sign a statement saying they wished to close down their camps. On June 26, when the matter came up for hearing, the petitioners, several camp managers and refugees filed 25 affidavits, detailing the extent of abdication of primary duty by the state and shocking instances of coercion and pressure being used against refugees and camp managers.

The writ petition pertaining to relief is still alive before the Gujarat High Court.

The Gujarat government showed itself in a crudely partisan and anti–constitutional light when it initially announced discriminatory amounts of compensation for the survivors of the Godhra tragedy and the post–Godhra carnage. Abdicating its primary role as protector and provider of all its citizenry, it has made no efforts to compute the extent of the loss of lives, the quantum of the destruction of homes, belongings, businesses and agricultural properties to date.

A measly Rs. 2,500 was given as dole to persons for loss of household goods (ghar vakhari) and, though the Prime Minister had announced that Rs. 50,000 would be given for loss of homes, less than 10 per cent of those who have obtained home compensation from the Gujarat government (at least 25 per cent of the total affected have not received anything at all) have got more than Rs. 30,000 each. For most of the survivors of the Gujarat carnage, the state government has rubbed salt on the wounds already suffered, by giving them paltry amounts of Rs. 1,200-2,500 each or less.