Former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, in an interview with veteran journalist Karan Thapar of The Wire on BBC documentary about the 2002 Gujarat riots, said that the British government conducted an investigation of its own because many citizens of Gujarati Muslim origin were worried about their loved ones in India and “were making representations” to that effect to the then Tony Blair government.
“The simple fact is that in Britain, including in my constituency, there were hundreds of thousands of people from the Indian State of Gujarat, mainly Muslims. There was a lot of concern, and there were also people that I knew whose families were affected by these inter-communal riots directly and they were making representations to us. (This was) one of the reasons why the then High Commissioner ordered this investigation,” Mr. Straw stated as the cause that prompted the unusual investigation.
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