NEW DELHI, India: An Indian weekly newsmagazine, Tehelka, has claimed that its investigation into 2002 post Godhra riots in Gujarat has found that the massacre of Muslims was carried out in full knowledge and sanction of Gujarat Chief Minister.

The six-month long "investigation brings confirmation that the Gujarat murder of Muslims was not a spontaneous swell of anger, but a planned genocide strategised and executed by top functionaries of the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the state authorities, with the knowledge and sanction of Chief Minister Narendra Modi," Tehelka claimed.

The magazine quoted a BJP MLA, who said that he was present in the meeting in which Modi gave them "three days' time to do whatever they wanted.

"He had given us three days time...to do whatever we could. He said he would not give us time after that...He said this openly," the news magazine quoted the MLA as saying.

After three days "he (Modi) asked us to stop and everything came to a halt," Haresh Bhatt, the then national co-coordinator of the Bajrang Dal was quoted, as saying.

"It appears that bombs were manufactured in factories owned by senior Bajrang Dal and VHP activists. Arms were smuggled from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab, and then distributed to execution squads led by MLAs and senior members of the Sangh Parivar. Consignments of arms were not just smuggled in once, but 'there were tens and tens of them," Tehelka wrote.