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After the documentary screening, NPC press freedom chair Rachel Oswald interviewed Aakashi Bhatt, daughter of jailed Indian whistleblower Sanjiv Bhatt, along with Gujarat pogrom survivor Irman Dawood and his uncle Yusuf Dawood. Aakashi Bhatt’s father Sanjiv Bhatt is serving a life sentence in prison in retaliation for testifying publicly about Modi’s complicity in the pogrom. Imran Dawood was beaten and left for dead during the pogrom. Hindu supremacists also murdered, then burned the remains of his two uncles along with a family friend.
In the interview led by Oswald, Aakashi Bhatt stated that the BBC documentary was only the “tip of the iceberg” when it came to Modi’s complicity in the pogrom. “These were not spontaneous but orchestrated killings,” Bhatt said. “They did not last for three days, as the documentary said, but rather three months. Police not only stood down, but in fact aided and abetted the rioters as they raped and killed Muslims. And so much of it was due to one man's political ambition: Narendra Modi.”
Bhatt said that after her father had testified publicly against Modi’s policy, the Indian government bulldozed her family home. Commenting on her father Sanjiv Bhatt’s life imprisonment shortly after this destruction, she said, “My father was arrested for the death in custody of a man he never met. He was thousands of kilometers away while the man died in police custody, which was a death deemed to be from medical reasons. His arrest is a complete sham.”
Bhatt called on American officials and journalists to strongly condemn Modi’s anti-minority and anti-democratic policies, saying, “American journalists can freely speak out about Modi without fear of imprisonment or getting killed.”
“They must speak out against Modi. The same goes for the American government. Why is Modi being welcomed with a state visit?” Bhatt asked.
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