WASHINGTON, March 5: There is compelling evidence that leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party had abetted the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat, according to Western press.

Reports also say police stood by and watched as mobs brought down the Manchaji Mosque in Ahmedabad with sledge-hammers, metal rods and shovels in a grim repeat of the Babri Masjid episode.

A report in London’s Daily Telegraph suggests that the Indian government also allowed the anti-Muslim violence to continue. The paper cites an unnamed senior military officer as saying that early last Thursday evening the military had 13 transport aircraft fuelled and ready to fly troops to Ahmedabad from Jodhpur, but for some inexplicable reason the dispatch of the planes was delayed.

India’s National Human Rights Commission has demanded that the BJP-controlled Gujarat government explained what it had done to suppress communal violence in the state, adding reports suggest “inaction by the police force and the highest authorities in the state to deal with this situation”.

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi has publicly defended the anti-Muslim violence, reports say. First, referring to the train attack, he noted that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction”, then commended the state’s population for their “remarkable restraint” under grave provocation. The chief minister has rejected all calls for inquiry into the police and the government’s handling of the riots, in which hundreds of Muslims have been slaughtered.