"We can think of no other reason to deny us visas, considering Amnesty always does its own research and we have absolutely no one in India who can do our research," Amnesty’s Gulia de Ponte told TNN, rejecting the Indian argument that Amnesty had "legions of local associates in Gujarat, collecting information on their behalf".


Earlier, Satyabrata Pal, India’s deputy high commissioner had told this paper, "We have received a request. It has been considered in Delhi. We have told Amnesty that we understand they have local associates who have been acting there and are collecting information on their behalf. And that we do not see over and above that what a few Amnesty researchers from here could do in Gujarat".


But De Ponte, one of Amnesty’s two London-based researchers who had applied for visas, claimed that "Indian officials always knew Amnesty was allowed to set up an office in Delhi only on condition that it engaged in no research".


She admitted that Amnesty was "in touch with several anti-communalism groups in Gujarat" but claimed that "this was limited to phone calls and emails and Amnesty could not take what they say as true till we see it ourselves".


De Ponte’s comments come as Amnesty’s Indian staff reportedly said they would publish a Gujarat report anyway, based on information from "secondary sources".


The bickering about who said what to whom comes within days of eight MPs of Britain’s governing Labour Party announcing that they would travel to Gujarat in October on "a fact-finding mission".


The MPs are yet to apply for Indian visas but sources said that it was unlikely they would list "fact-finding" as their purpose in visiting India.


Officials dismissed the MPs' declared intention as bluster meant for "domestic constituency consumption", especially in strongly Muslim or Gujarati Muslim areas.


Analysts said the MPs’ stated intentions and the new row over visas for Amnesty staff underlined the continuing Western interest in violence-scarred Gujarat.


Sources said that Amnesty’s visa applications appeared to have fallen foul of the authorities’ stated determination to prevent the Gujarat issue being raked up again at a "sensitive time, the worst possible time for Amnesty to be visiting".


But Amnesty’s de Ponte defended her organisation as "a respected international human rights group, which knows how to conduct itself in a delicate and sensitive situation such as Gujarat".

De Ponte insisted that "For research, we would have to travel from here and we always make our intentions clear to a government when we apply for a visa because we are a transparent organisation".