This massive report in Tehelka on a 2002 massacre of Muslims in India will really make your stomach turn. Rampaging Hindu zealots—yes, they come in all religious flavors—left more than 2,000 people dead, some in the most gruesome ways possible.
Dozens of eyewitnesses who deposed before the Nanavati-Shah Commission recounted scenes of children being burnt alive and women being raped. “We did’t spare any of them,” Bajrangi said. “They shouldn’t be allowed to breed. Whoever they are, even if they’re women or children, there’s nothing to be done with them; cut them down. Thrash them, slash them, burn the bastards.”
Kauser Bano, was nine months pregnant that day. Her belly was torn open and her foetus wrenched out, held aloft on the tip of a sword, then dashed to the ground and flung into a fire. Bajrangi recounts how he ripped apart “ek woh pregnant … b*******d sala;” how he showed Muslims the meaning of wrath—“If you harm us, we can respond—we’re no khichdi-kadhi lot.”
The MotherJones blog says it’s long been known that the Indian government was complicit—these kinds of sectarian slayings have been ongoing since the Indian partition—“this time, it was all caught on tape.”
