The
Judgement Takes Effect,
But The Cause?
Outlook Editorial
21 September, 2006
Outlook
India
In all the euphoria of "getting
the guilty" in each of the staggered verdicts in the '93 Bombay
blasts case, the city's overlooked one thing: that the judgement, however
just and overdue, addresses only one side of the violence attending
the Babri Masjid demolition and leading to the blasts.
Even as the CBI, Mumbai police and governments pat themselves on the
back, and citizens demand death penalty for all the Memons—four
of the family have been convicted, three acquitted—there has been
no conviction in any of the thousands of cases registered during and
after the post-Babri riots from December 7, 1992, to January 21, 1993.
Ironically, some riot victims
are fighting cases fabricated against them by the police while perpetrators
of the violence, whether men in uniform or in saffron, are walking free.
Why, Sena chief Bal Thackeray, the 'mastermind of the riots', hasn't
even been touched. "Mumbai is recalling the suffering of blast
victims and feeling happy over the judgement. But it's not sparing a
single thought for victims of mob or police violence. Both demand equal
attention. In fact, close to 1,000 people were killed in riots and 1,00,000
displaced," rues Justice (retd) Hosbet Suresh who, along with Justice
(retd) S.M. Daud, conducted a Citizens' Inquiry into the '92-93 violence.
Their report was vindicated years later by the Justice B.N. Srikrishna
Commission report, which too gathers dust.
While top investigators
cracked the blasts case and filed a 10,000-page chargesheet in eight
months, riot cases filed in police stations across the city were hastily
closed or not brought to trial. firs are still being filed—13-and-a-half
years later! While the blasts trial happened in a designated court,
the few riot cases that went to court are being tried at a snail's pace.
The Shiv Sena-BJP dispensation was forced to accept the Srikrishna Commission
report, but did little, for obvious political reasons. The Congress-ncp
government that assumed power in 1999 and again in 2004 on the explicit
promise of implementing the report has done nothing except set up the
Special Task Force (STF) in 2000.
The STF was to re-examine
cases closed unlawfully and file fresh ones as suggested by the commission.
Of the 1,370 Summary 'A' cases—marked as true but undetected—it
took up only a 100, re-investigated 15 and filed about eight fresh cases.
Now, the STF office is a ghost office; its chief K.P. Raghuvanshi is
now head of the much-in-demand Anti-Terrorist Squad. For those who wonder
why parallels must be drawn between the blasts case and the riots cases,
this is what Justice Srikrishna said in his report: "One common
link (between the riots and the bomb blasts) appears to be that the
former appear to have been a causative factor for the latter. The serial
bomb blasts were a reaction to the totality of events at Ayodhya and
Bombay in December 1992 and January 1993. The resentment against the
government and police among a large body of Muslim youth was exploited
by Pakistan-aided anti-national elements. They were brainwashed into
taking revenge and a conspiracy was hatched and implemented at the instance
of Dawood Ibrahim."
One constable, accused of
indulging in riots with a naked sword, was dismissed from service in
2003; another compulsorily retired. But there's still the R.D. Tyagi
case. The Srikrishna report found the then joint commissioner of police
"guilty of excessive and unnecessary firing" leading to the
death of nine Muslims in the Suleiman Bakery incident. Not only did
Tyagi go on to become Mumbai's police commissioner, he was discharged
in the case in April 2003. The state has not yet filed an appeal. In
the Wadala Hari Masjid case, SI Nikhil Kapse was found "guilty
of unjustified firing, inhuman and brutal behaviour" that killed
seven Muslims, but was exonerated in a departmental inquiry.The STF
hasn't pursued it. None of the 32 police officers listed in the report
have been convicted. For many, the cases pending in the apex court are
the sole hope.