Narandra Modi's Vibrant Gujarat Story: Propaganda vs Fact #mustread

PTI | Apr 22, 2013, 12.40 AM IST

WASHINGTON: India‘s civil society continues to express concern over the Gujarat government’s failure to protect people or arrest those responsible for communal violence in 2002, a US report on human rights has said.

The report, titled ‘Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2012′ released by the US state department, as mandated by the Congress, says human rights groups continue to allege that investigative bodies in their reports showed bias in favour of Gujarat’s chief minister Narendra Modi.

The chapter on India in the report runs into 60 pages, according to which the most significant human rights problems in India in 2012 were police and security force abuses including extra-judicial killings, torture, and rape; widespread corruption at all levels of government, leading to denial of justice; and separatist, insurgent, and societal violence.

“Other human rights problems included disappearances, poor prison conditions that were frequently life-threatening, arbitrary arrest and detention, and lengthy pretrial detention. The judiciary was overburdened, and court backlogs led to lengthy delays or the denial of justice,” said the report which was released by US secretary of state John Kerry on Friday.

“Authorities continued to infringe on citizens’ privacy rights,” it said. “Law enforcement and legal avenues for rape victims were inadequate, overtaxed, and unable to address the issue effectively,” the report adde