No instance of communal violence has provoked as much
controversy as the Gujarat 2002 carnage, in which over
1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed. And none
has been subjected to as much fact-finding. Yet, as this book
demonstrates, the fact-finding riddled with ambiguities and
deceptions, gaps and contradictions glossed over crucial
pieces of evidence.
While the Nanavati Commission shirked from examining Modi,
the special investigation team (SIT) left unasked a range of questions on the anti-Muslim
violence that followed the burning of a train in Godhra carrying Hindutva activists. How
could Modi, for instance, claim to have been unaware, for nearly five hours, of the first
post-Godhra massacre that took place at Ahmedabad’s Gulberg Society? How does this
claim square with his admission that he was tracking the violence as it unfolded?
Scrupulously researched and now updated to factor in the national elections of 2014, The
Fiction of Fact-Finding draws telling parallels between Gujarat 2002 and the 1984 massacre
of Sikhs in Delhi to underline an insidious pattern in Indian democracy: the subversion of
the criminal justice system under a shroud of legal platitudes.

About the Author

Manoj Mitta is a senior editor with The Times of India, writing on legal, human rights and public policy issues. In 2007, he coauthored a critically acclaimed book on fact-finding in the 1984 carnage, When a Tree Shook Delhi. A law graduate from Hyderabad, Mitta worked earlier with The Indian Express and India Today. He is a patron of ‘Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Judicial Reforms’, a civil society watchdog, and is on the advisory board of Amnesty International India and on the governing body of Foundation for Media Professionals. He lives in Noida.