NEW DELHI, March 10: Gujarat police alone killed an unprecedented 100 plus people, ostensibly to control the recent communal violence in India’s western state, Chief Minister Narendra Modi said on Sunday

“Never before has the police killed more than 100 people to control a communal riot in India,” Modi said, patting himself on the back. His resignation has been sought by almost all opposition groups.

Claiming that he had done well to control the anti-Muslim upsurge after a Muslim mob lynched 58 Hindus in a train by setting three coaches on fire on Feb 27, Modi said that never before had a communal conflagration in India been put down in a record 72-hours as he had done. Senior journalists who visited Gujarat disputed the claim.

“Never before in a communal riot more bullets were used by the police than tear-gas canisters,” Modi continued, little realizing that India’s vigilant human rights bodies, if not the scandalized politicians too, could be watching him get into a potentially embarrassing pickle.

The state has officially put the death toll from the current communal flare-up at 678, higher than the 660 killed in Ahmedabad riots in 1969. Unofficially, journalists put the toll from last week’s violence in excess of a thousand.

Modi denied ever saying that he had quoted Isaac Newton’s law to suggest that Hindu mobs were reacting to the Muslim action in Godhra. Star News replayed his comment on Feb 28, when he had said he could understand the anger of the people who were reacting to the train incident. But he had also said that no one should take the law in his owns hands.

Senior Indian journalists who recently visited Gujarat in the middle of the violence spoke out strongly against Modi’s alleged attempt to muzzle the press. Star News political editor Rajdeep Sardesai said his channel was banned for showing the story as it was.