Drawing from Agamben's theorization of sovereign power and bare lives, we engage with the narratives of three sets of murders in the state of Gujarat. These murders in Gujarat followed a pattern-the victims were almost always Muslims and were labeled as terrorists who had come to assassinate important politicians in the state, and the police claimed that these terrorists were killed in cross-fire. We analyse the empirical material pertaining to these murders to understand the organizational and political processes that were mobilized to legitimize them. We also focus on possibilities of resistance and subversion on account of the contradictions that emerge in the mobilization of these organizational and political processes, and thereby hope to make a call for organizing social relations around anchors other than sovereignty.In 2002, following the burning of a train coach in which 59 people were killed, there were widespread riots in the Indian state of Gujarat. Victims alleged that powerful people were involved in looting, arson and murder, and that the state had not been serious in bringing the rioters and murderers to justice (Engineer, 2003). While the rioters and murderers roamed free, the victims of the riots were forced to live as refugees (Gupta, 2011). The perpetrators of the riots who had close

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