The Indian Express - August 19, 2004 | Editorial
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=53340
Justice, in Gujarat
The SC’s directive on reopening riot cases is the most damning indictment of Modi’s govt yet
When the Supreme Court transferred first the Best Bakery case and then the Bilkis Rasool case out of Gujarat, it seemed the wise thing to do under the circumstances. The circumstances were framed, of course, by the continuing inaction of the Narendra Modi government in bringing the culprits of the 2002 riots to book, its staunch refusal to let justice prevail. But even then, the apex court’s intervention seemed in some ways to be skirting the point in Gujarat. The point was that the state government’s failure to convict a single murderer in the riot cases spoke of a very massive breakdown and transferring individual high-profile cases out of the state seemed to be a very small cure. What about the Zaheera Sheikhs and Bilkis Rasools whose tragedies had escaped the eye of the media or other civil society organisations? The point, surely, is that something should be done to make Gujarat itself more hospitable to the processes of justice. That’s where the rubble lies. That is where truth and justice need to be resurrected. Transferring out cases seemed like an inadequate response.
The Court’s latest directive on Tuesday meets that challenge full-throttle. In asking the Modi government to set up a high-level team headed by the director general of police to review, one by one, the 2000 or so of the cases — nearly half of the total number registered — in which the police arbitrarily filed closure reports instead of chargesheets, and in putting the onus squarely on senior officials of the same police force to explain why each case must not be investigated afresh, the court has crafted a far-reaching response indeed. It has given justice another chance in Gujarat. In doing so, it has held out hope to a much larger number of the survivors and families of victims of the carnage in 2002. Finally, it has given the Modi government an opportunity to make amends.
There is another way of reading the court’s order. By directing the Modi government to reopen cases that had been closed under its watch, by asking it to account for the prosecution’s failure to appeal against acquittals by trial courts, and by associating activists and NGOs with the entire process of review, the court has passed its most damning indictment yet of the Modi government. What the highest court of the land seems to be saying is that the state government is completely incapable and unwilling to uphold the rule of law, that it requires a special combination of measures and unrelenting oversight to make it perform its basic constitutional duty. This is unprecedented. A constitutional breakdown, no less. Its seriousness must be lost on no one. Narendra Modi’s government has nowhere to hide.
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