Human rights activist and Gujarat riots widow dies aged 86

Zakia Jafri, a human rights activist who sought justice for the killing of her MP husband during the 2002 Gujarat riots in India, has died at the age of 86.

Jafri’s death marks the end of a two-decade-long battle to hold political figures accountable for the violence that claimed the life of her husband, Congress Party politician Ehsan Jafri, and 68 others in a massacre at Gulberg Society, a Muslim neighbourhood in Ahmedabad.

Jafri’s husband was one of an estimated 1,180 people, mostly Muslims, who died on 28 February 2002 during religious riots across Gujarat that followed the burning of the Sabarmati Express, a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, in Godhra.

Her son, Tanveer Jafri, confirmed she had died, saying she had completed her usual morning routine before feeling unwell. A doctor was called but declared her dead around 11.30am. Jafri lived in Surat with her son but had been staying with her daughter, Nishrin, in Ahmedabad during her final days.

Teesta Setalvad, a fellow human rights activist and long-time co-petitioner in legal challenges related to the riots, mourned Jafri’s loss. Setalvad wrote on social media that Jafri was “a compassionate leader of the human rights community,” and expressed solidarity with her family. “Her visionary presence will be missed by the nation, family, friends, and the world,” Setalvad wrote.

In 2002, a Hindu mob dragged her 72-year-old husband out of their plush bungalow in Gulberg Society, then tortured and killed him in front of her eyes.

Jafri, 64 at the time, could do nothing to save her husband. The state was under lockdown following the massacre of 59 Hindu pilgrims on the Sabarmati Express the day before. The lockdown was called by the radical right-wing Hindu group the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

The 59 killed on the Sabarmati Express were mostly volunteers of Hindu organisations who perished when their coach was set on fire at Gujarat’s Godhra station by a suspected Muslim mob, though who lit the fire is often disputed.

It unleashed violence on such a scale across the state that it led to deep political ramifications and irreversibly altered relations between India’s majority Hindu and minority Muslim communities.

By the end of the day, Jafri had witnessed a violent mob not only kill her husband, but ransack the neighbourhood and set fire to her home of 30 years, forcing her and scores of her neighbours to leave barefoot in search of safety in a state simmering with communal tension.

Police and government officials were accused of directing the rioters and giving them a list of Muslim-owned properties, while India’s prime minister Narendra Modi – who was chief minister of Gujarat at the time – was accused of condoning the violence. Mr Modi has always denied any wrongdoing.

Suspicions that Mr Modi quietly supported the riots led the US, UK and EU to deny him a visa at the time. Those moves were later reversed, and a committee appointed by India’s Supreme Court found there was “no prosecutable evidence” of complicity involving either Mr Modi or senior officials from his state government.

Jafri’s legal efforts were pivotal in the re-investigation of several riot cases, including the massacre at Gulberg Society, ordered by the Supreme Court in 2008. But her pleas for political accountability were consistently dismissed by the courts, culminating in a 2022 verdict that cleared Mr Modi of wrongdoing.

Despite these setbacks, Jafri continued to visit the ruins of Gulberg Society, where she and her family had once lived, up until last year.

“We were planning to go again, this 28 February,” her son Tanveer Jafri told the Indian Express. “She fought from 2002 to 2022… and till the Supreme Court verdict (in 2022) she had hopes that she would get justice.”

Among those offering their condolences for her death included Kerala’s chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who praised Jafri’s legal fight as a “shining chapter” in the history of secular India, while Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said Jafri “saw her hope for justice die before her eyes”.

“Future generations will hear the history of the ‘new India’ in Zakia Jafri’s tears, sobs, fight for justice, and then her defeat,” Khera wrote in a post on X.