Let’s not lie now.
IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt alleged that at a meeting on the night of February 27, 2002, Modi told senior police that Hindus should be allowed to "vent their anger." Another officer, R.B. Sreekumar, said he was denied a promotion for criticizing the government's inaction
Sanjiv Bhatt's wife fought on Congress ticket. R. B. Sreekumar was implicated and charged for framing a highly decorated ISRO scientist Nambi Narayanan in a fake espionage case.
Both are dubious characters with conflict of interests and one of them even straight up went against an innocent scientist just to massage his fat ego.
I've no horse in this debate; why create a throwaway account for this comment?
Please don't throw around accusations like this; especially after creating a temporary account.
I was an adult in 2002. I remember the riots differently. (And, BTW: riots were almost an annual occurrence in some part or the other of the country, like clockwork. Moradabad, Aligarh, Bareilly, etc. etc.)
The SOP when riots happen is to call in the Army to do a "flag march", after a couple of days.
But guess what happened just a few months before the Gujarat riots? The attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001 [1]. As a result, the Army was deployed on the borders and could not be pulled to do flag marches. The Gijarat govt wrote to all neighboring states (MP, MH, RJ) to ask if some police could be spared to help stop the riots. All 3 state governments replied "no, we don't have any police to spare". What else could the government do?
From 2004 thtough 2014, several different teams investigated Gujarat government's actions, and in the end gave them a clean chit.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Indian_Parliament_attack