India Tomorrow
New Delhi, August 13— On August 13, 1980, a broad daylight massacre had occurred at the biggest Eidgah in Moradabad district of Uttar Pradesh when Muslims were offering Eid prayers.
Around 40,000 Muslims had gathered at the Eidgah to offer annual prayers when a contingent of the state police and Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) opened fire and around 300 Muslims were killed. Late Syed Shababuddin, who was then Member of Lok Sabha, had termed the Moradabad firing as the Jallianwala Bagh of independent India. In both the incidents of Jallianwala Bagh and Moradabad Eidgah, unarmed, innocent people were fired upon in a closed area with one exit.
BJP leader MJ Akbar, who was then a young journalist, narrated the incident in his book Riot after Riot: “Men of the Provincial Armed Constabulary opened fire on about 40,000 Muslims while they were at Eid prayers. No one knows exactly how many people died. What is known is that the incident at Moradabad was not a Hindu-Muslim riot but a calculated cold-blooded massacre of Muslims by a rabidly communal police force which tried to cover up its genocide by making it out to be a Hindu-Muslim riot.”
Minorities, including Muslims, have not been targeted only in Gujarat 2002 or under the BJP rule. They have been targeted in several states in the last 70 years of independence and most of the time the party in power was Congress.
At the time of Moradabad killings, Congress was in power in Lucknow and V.P. Singh was Chief Minister.
