2002 Gujarat Riots: Khuda Hafiz Zakia Jafri, Nobody Spells Justice Like You


On the 27 February 2002, the S6 coach of the Sabarmati Express train caught fire. It was on its way back to Gujarat from Uttar Pradesh, from the city of Ayodhya. On board the S6 coach of the train were many kar sevaks – Hindus carrying bricks from their villages, to erect a temple in Ayodhya.

It wasn’t clear what happened, but someone pulled the chain, causing the train to stop in the town of Godhra. A skirmish started between some of the kar sevaks and people at the railway station.

The incident soon took a violent turn, and the bogey caught fire. At least 59 kar sevaks were burnt to death, and a story spread that they were killed by Muslims at the Godhra station. If Muslims killed Hindus, then Hindus must retaliate, was the mob justice invoked in two-thirds of the state.

From the next day, 28 February, onwards, Hindu mobs, hungry for revenge, descended on Muslim neighbourhoods. In Ahmedabad, about 128 kilometres from where the S6 coach had been burnt, Ehsan Jafri saw a mob approaching his set of flats.

The mob was getting larger and closer to the Gulberg Society, so Ehsan rang the police. Eyewitnesses, including his wife, later reported that the police did not arrive.

Ehsan was then reported to have fired a shot from his own personal gun into the air, hoping to scare away the mob. Instead, what Zakia saw and testified to was that the mob, perhaps incensed by the firing, encircled the Gulberg Society, and eventually got to Ehsan. They dragged him from his home, then used the swords and knives they had on them to cut him to pieces.

On 18 June 2016, 14 years after the massacre, the Supreme court convicted 24 people, 11 for life, in the Gulberg Society case. However, Zakia’s allegations of the complicity of PM Modi were dismissed. Zakia appealed to the Supreme court but that too was dismissed in 2022. 



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