Books › Gujarat Files
Gujarat Files
Anatomy of a Cover Up
214 pages
A chilling, high-stakes undercover descent into the dark heart of political impunity and systemic violence.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like holding your breath in a room full of dangerous secrets. It is a propulsive, nerve-wracking experience that reads with the pacing of a political thriller, yet carries the heavy, dread-soaked weight of absolute reality. The narrative plunges you into a claustrophobic world of undercover sting operations, where the casual, unvarnished admissions of powerful men create a deeply chilling atmosphere. The prose is deliberately stark and journalistic, stepping back to let the raw transcripts deliver their own devastating blows. It is an enraging, courageous read that will grip anyone who devours high-stakes investigative journalism, leaving behind a lingering sense of outrage and a profound understanding of the mechanics of impunity.
- Mood
- chilling
- dread-soaked
- claustrophobic
- enraging
- Tone
- urgent
- unflinching
- tense
- investigative
- courageous
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- systemic corruption · abuse of power · state-sponsored violence · the cost of truth · political impunity
- The writing
- Direct, unvarnished, and heavily reliant on raw transcripts, allowing the horrifying admissions to speak for themselves without embellishment.
- The arc
- Begins with the nerve-wracking tension of an undercover sting and descends into a chilling, profound outrage at the banality of systemic evil.
- Who it's for
- Readers who gravitate toward hard-hitting, high-stakes investigative journalism and political exposes that speak truth to power.
Content notes
- state-sponsored violence
- ethnic cleansing
- police brutality
- murder
- religious persecution
About the book
Gujarat Files is the account of an eight-month long undercover investigation by journalist Rana Ayyub into the Gujarat riots, fake encounters and the murder of state Home Minister Haren Pandya that brings to the fore startling revelations. Posing as Maithili Tyagi, a filmmaker from the American Film Institute Conservatory, Rana met bureaucrats and top cops in Gujarat who held pivotal positions in the state between 2001 and 2010. The transcripts of the sting operation reveal the complicity of the state and its officials in crimes against humanity.
With sensational disclosures about cases that run parallel to Narendra Modi and Amit Shah’s ascent to power and their journey from Gujarat to New Delhi, the book tells you the hushed truth of the state in the words of those who developed amnesia while speaking before commissions of enquiry, but held nothing back in the secretly taped videos which form the basis of this remarkable read.
Description from Open Library.
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