Shhh...Muslim!
03-08-2007
By Sagarika Ghose
Hindustan Times:
There is a certain chilling predictability about the list of convicts, a dreadful Orwellian litany of sameness. After a mammoth 14 years of trial and the dramatic sentencing of Sanjay Dutt, the Bombay blasts case of 1993 is closed. Of the 123 accused, 100 have been sentenced, 12 have been sentenced to death, 20 given life terms, 15 of them with rigorous imprisonment (RI). What are the names of those who will die? Among others, Memon, Turk, Tarani, Shaikh, Mukadam, Ghansar, Malik, Pawle, and Khan.
What are the names of those who will serve life terms with RI? Among others, Shaikh, Khairulla, Qureshi, Memon, Rehman and Kadar. In the 1998 Coimbatore blast verdict this week, the main accused Abdul Nazar Mahdani has been acquitted, but SA Basha, founder of al-Umma has been found guilty, along with 157 others. Muslim after Muslim has stepped up to be convicted and sentenced. Soon India’s jails will be choc-a-block with Muslims.
The conspiracy that bombed Mumbai in 1993 and took 257 lives was demonic and destroyed lives. But after the conspiracy of terror, has come a surreal conspiracy of silence. There is a deathly quiet, a floating shroud of bemused acceptance. There is not a shred of sympathy, no trace of introspection, no question of benefit of doubt given to any of the accused in the court of public opinion. To voice any doubts about the long delayed trial is considered ‘anti-national’, ‘unpatriotic’ or ‘pseudo-secular’. Yet senior lawyers have publicly cast doubt on how the blast case is a shame on the judiciary. How can justice be thoroughly done through the mountains of documentation, the sheer bulk of facts and contradictions, the long delayed trial and lapses in human memory that must have faced poor Justice PD Kode. A senior counsel has called the case a “mistrial” and a case of “playing to the gallery”.
Yet, apart from the high voltage debate on Sanjay Dutt, among the larger public, there is only silence. The guilty are Muslims, after all. They killed innocent people, they’ve been brought to justice and that’s the end of that. A softly floating cloud engulfs us in its comforting yet toxic fumes. Is it a phantom? A phantom that is lulling Indian society into a deadly illness of certainty. A society that does not ask questions of itself, a society that does not take itself to task, but wallows in convenient ‘truths’, is a society doomed to death. Hindus and Muslims whisper among themselves in their own ghettos. The cross-religion and cross-community debate is dead or dying.
Judge PD Kode is justifiably hailed as a tough and idealistic judge and his own fairness is not in doubt. The prosecution of Special Public prosecutor Ujwal Nikam has been determined. Yet, in a case where far too many cases were bunched up together, where the sheer volume of paperwork was so huge, isn’t it expecting too much of a single human being to be perfectly conversant with each case? In the prevailing silence, a few voices have sounded. As Muslim after Muslim has walked to his death, as ‘terrorist’ after ‘terrorist’ has been taken away for life, what about the Hindu mobs and Hindu police officers who were named and indicted by the Justice Srikrishna Commission that inquired into the bloodcurdling 1992-93 riots of Mumbai in which 900 died? That horrifying report, indicts 31 “trigger-happy” policemen: among others, the names here are sub-inspector Vasant Madhukar More, police inspectors Patankar and Wahule, Jt Commissoner of Police RD Tyagi, not to mention political names like Gopinath Munde, Madhukar Sarpotdar and Ram Naik of the BJP all accused of inciting mobs. Aren’t riots too not an act of terror? A terrorist is defined as one who kills innocent civilians for a political purpose. So aren’t those Hindu rioters too not ‘terrorists’ and shouldn’t they too face the same law as Muslim ‘terrorists’?
Let’s try and break the conspiracy of silence a little. Rubina Memon is not a celebrity. Instead she is the wife of Tiger Memon's older brother Sulaiman. She has been given rigorous imprisonment for life. Rubina was the woman in the brown burqa who we all saw on television. Rubina has been found guilty under Tada because it was the van registered under her name that was used to carry arms and ammunition for the blasts. She also allowed her house to be used for ‘terror activities’ and had arranged funds from her bank account for the conspirators.
But is there any proof that Rubina actually bought the car that was registered in her name? Did she use the car? Did she actually know what her husband’s brothers were planning to do? Or was it kept a secret from her, as men all over India, keep important secrets from their wives and sisters-in- law? If Afsan Guru, wife of Shaukat Husain Guru, could be acquitted in the Parliament attack case because there was no proof she knew her house was being used for ‘terror activities’, can the same lack of knowledge not have been possible for Rubina? Assuming, she did know, is there proof that Rubina played an active role in the blasts? Or was she the typical uneducated Muslim woman in a household who did what her menfolk asked her to do, even allowing a car to be registered in her name so that her husband could escape tax?
For her crimes, Rubina will serve a life term with rigorous imprisonment while her teenage children seek permission to visit their mother in jail. Tragically, justice may not have still been done to Rubina Memon.
Zebunissa Qazi is 60 and also held guilty under Tada of abetting terrorist acts. She’s been given five years of rigorous imprisonment. What did she do? She says some boys handed her a bag and told her to keep it in her garage. She did not know what was inside the bag. Are Rubina Memon and Zebunissa Qazi terrorists?
Dr Mohammed Haneef, detained for 27 days in Australia is on the other side too. On the other side, distant, far away from Indian mainstream society, from muted civil society groups, distant from the voices of the intelligentsia, bludgeoned into silence by the spectre and reality of the ‘Islamist terrorist’. What factors should have exercised the Indian conscience about Dr Haneef? That it is not a crime to be related to those who are terrorists, only a conspiracy is a crime. That lending a SIM card is not a criminal offence. That a one-way ticket is not a criminal offence. That a beard is not a criminal offence. Australian civil society took its government head on about Haneef. Indian civil society turned its back on Haneef, instead vilifying the Prime Minister when he made the mistake of confessing he had had a sleepless night about Haneef’s parents.
There is suddenly no doubt left in the minds of the majority of Indian society. Political tokenism of three Muslim vice-presidential candidates sits alongside a covert hidden communalism that does not express itself in riots but in quiet determined segregation. The burqa-clad or lungi-clad figures march into the Tada court, yet apart from the publicity circus around celebrity Sanjay Dutt, we are incurious about the individuals behind the burqas and the lungis. The little stories of mothers and brothers are of no interest. The toxic cloud of silence drifts ever closer, lulling us into a dreamless sleep.
The writer is senior editor, CNN-IBN
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=636872d9-e455-4877-997e-60de8d9ccbd9&&Headline=Shhh...Muslim!
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Showing posts with label Mumbai blasts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mumbai blasts. Show all posts
August 06, 2007
Justice Srikrishana: Act on report
Ensure no Govt can reject inconvenient report: Srikrishna
SEEMA CHISHTI
Indian Express, 6 August 2007
Mumbai Riots Probe: Says a judge must take up job only if promised that report will be binding
NEW DELHI, AUGUST 5: Justice B N Srikrishna, the author of the commission report that went into the Mumbai communal riots of 1992-3, has called for an institutional mechanism which ensures that the government of the day does not have the discretion to reject a report it finds “inconvenient”.
“Any judge taking up such an assignment must do so on the promise that it (the report) is binding on the government,” Justice Srikrishna, who retired from the Supreme Court and now heads the Sixth Pay Commission, told The Indian Express.
“In several countries like Australia and South Africa, the findings of such a report are binding on the government. Why should that not be the case here? I have spent five years of my life looking into the Mumbai riots, with government money, in the time when I could have disposed at least 20,000 cases, so why let that go waste?”
“A Commission of Inquiry is not a court of law. A Commission is intended to ascertain the turn of events and advise the government, so the government can sit down seriously and investigate, use the facts provided to file a complaint. And the Commission had got suitable facts and material which the government could have used to file its case in the matter of Mumbai in 1992/3,” he said.
The Srikrishna Commission report is back in the news with a petition being filed in the Supreme Court, wanting to know why no action has been taken on the report despite the fact that it fixed responsibility on certain organisations, political leaders and police officers for the riots in Mumbai just after the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
Nearly 1,000 people are known to have died in the riots that Justice Srikrishna investigated. In a few months, after the riots, on March 12 in 1993, Mumbai was rocked by serial blasts that killed 250 people.
Why has no government in Maharashtra, even the Congress-NCP in power now, taken his report seriously? Justice Srikrishna said: “I wouldn’t know that. I am a babe in the woods as far as understanding political equations go. I am a simple judge, who can say what is black and white. The blue and the red in between is beyond me.”
Asked to recall his toughest moments while compiling the report, he said; “If the police does some fair documenting, that serves as a useful tool, and can be taken as the authentic account of what has happened. But if the protector himself is biased, then it becomes very difficult. You have to go for other witnesses. Now if a police document says X, but witnesses all say Y, and I know X is a doctored document, it becomes a difficult choice for me. When all the way from the CM to a police constable, there is heavy bias. But what happened, and my observations are there, is in black and white for all to see.” Justice Srikrishna said riots and terror attacks are different from each other, and both, difficult to investigate.
“Riots are by their very nature about passions flaring up, while bomb blasts are cold-blooded acts, meticulously planned. Communal riots can also be built up over a period of time because of several kinds of provocations or can be an instant conflagration.”
What his probe found
The Commission
• Set up to probe the post-Babri Masjid demolition riots in Mumbai. The Sena-BJP govt added aspects of the March 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai to its terms of reference
• Took 5 years to complete probe, submitted report on Feb 16,1998
The Findings
• Named 31 police officers for “actively participating in riots, communal incidents or incidents of looting, arson and so on”. Called for “strict action” but only one police officer dismissed so far. NCP, Cong manifestoes of 1999, 2004 promised to implement report
• Commission’s view that “though several incidents of violence took place during the period from 15th December 1992 to 5th January 1993, large-scale rioting and violence was commenced from 6th January 1993 by Hindus brought to fever pitch by communally inciting propaganda unleashed by Hindu communal organisations and writings in newspapers like Saamna and Navaakal.”
• Report pinpoints attitude of Sena leaders like Bal Thackeray, Madhukar Sarpotdar and Manohar Joshi as responsible for Sena “vigilantism”. It says, “because some criminal Muslims killed innocent Hindus in one corner of the city, the Shiv Sainiks ‘retaliated’ against several innocent Muslims in other corners of the city”
• Blamed “effete political leadership, vacillation for political reasons and conflicting orders issued to the police commissioner” for the unchecked violence. Maharashtra had a Congress government at that time
SEEMA CHISHTI
Indian Express, 6 August 2007
Mumbai Riots Probe: Says a judge must take up job only if promised that report will be binding
NEW DELHI, AUGUST 5: Justice B N Srikrishna, the author of the commission report that went into the Mumbai communal riots of 1992-3, has called for an institutional mechanism which ensures that the government of the day does not have the discretion to reject a report it finds “inconvenient”.
“Any judge taking up such an assignment must do so on the promise that it (the report) is binding on the government,” Justice Srikrishna, who retired from the Supreme Court and now heads the Sixth Pay Commission, told The Indian Express.
“In several countries like Australia and South Africa, the findings of such a report are binding on the government. Why should that not be the case here? I have spent five years of my life looking into the Mumbai riots, with government money, in the time when I could have disposed at least 20,000 cases, so why let that go waste?”
“A Commission of Inquiry is not a court of law. A Commission is intended to ascertain the turn of events and advise the government, so the government can sit down seriously and investigate, use the facts provided to file a complaint. And the Commission had got suitable facts and material which the government could have used to file its case in the matter of Mumbai in 1992/3,” he said.
The Srikrishna Commission report is back in the news with a petition being filed in the Supreme Court, wanting to know why no action has been taken on the report despite the fact that it fixed responsibility on certain organisations, political leaders and police officers for the riots in Mumbai just after the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
Nearly 1,000 people are known to have died in the riots that Justice Srikrishna investigated. In a few months, after the riots, on March 12 in 1993, Mumbai was rocked by serial blasts that killed 250 people.
Why has no government in Maharashtra, even the Congress-NCP in power now, taken his report seriously? Justice Srikrishna said: “I wouldn’t know that. I am a babe in the woods as far as understanding political equations go. I am a simple judge, who can say what is black and white. The blue and the red in between is beyond me.”
Asked to recall his toughest moments while compiling the report, he said; “If the police does some fair documenting, that serves as a useful tool, and can be taken as the authentic account of what has happened. But if the protector himself is biased, then it becomes very difficult. You have to go for other witnesses. Now if a police document says X, but witnesses all say Y, and I know X is a doctored document, it becomes a difficult choice for me. When all the way from the CM to a police constable, there is heavy bias. But what happened, and my observations are there, is in black and white for all to see.” Justice Srikrishna said riots and terror attacks are different from each other, and both, difficult to investigate.
“Riots are by their very nature about passions flaring up, while bomb blasts are cold-blooded acts, meticulously planned. Communal riots can also be built up over a period of time because of several kinds of provocations or can be an instant conflagration.”
What his probe found
The Commission
• Set up to probe the post-Babri Masjid demolition riots in Mumbai. The Sena-BJP govt added aspects of the March 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai to its terms of reference
• Took 5 years to complete probe, submitted report on Feb 16,1998
The Findings
• Named 31 police officers for “actively participating in riots, communal incidents or incidents of looting, arson and so on”. Called for “strict action” but only one police officer dismissed so far. NCP, Cong manifestoes of 1999, 2004 promised to implement report
• Commission’s view that “though several incidents of violence took place during the period from 15th December 1992 to 5th January 1993, large-scale rioting and violence was commenced from 6th January 1993 by Hindus brought to fever pitch by communally inciting propaganda unleashed by Hindu communal organisations and writings in newspapers like Saamna and Navaakal.”
• Report pinpoints attitude of Sena leaders like Bal Thackeray, Madhukar Sarpotdar and Manohar Joshi as responsible for Sena “vigilantism”. It says, “because some criminal Muslims killed innocent Hindus in one corner of the city, the Shiv Sainiks ‘retaliated’ against several innocent Muslims in other corners of the city”
• Blamed “effete political leadership, vacillation for political reasons and conflicting orders issued to the police commissioner” for the unchecked violence. Maharashtra had a Congress government at that time
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