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Controversial Modi

SIR – Your leader on Narendra Modi, the front-runner to be India’s next prime minister, repeated accusations that have been thoroughly investigated and found to be without basis by no less than a Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Indian Supreme Court (“Would Modi save India or wreck it?”, December 14th).

You said that Mr Modi refuses to atone for a “pogrom” against Muslims in Gujarat, where he is chief minister. But what you call a pogrom was in fact a “communal riot” in 2002 in which a quarter of the people killed were Hindus—170 of them from bullets fired by the police. By contrast, the more numerous 1984 killing of Sikhs after Indira Gandhi’s assassination was indeed a pogrom, directed exclusively at the Sikhs. With not a single charge against Mr Modi standing up to the SIT’s scrutiny, it is absurd to ask him to atone.