(Outlook Magazine
Magazine | Sep 25, 2006)
File
'93 BOMBAY BLASTS
The Judgement Takes Effect, But The Cause?
Of course, Mumbai should welcome the verdict for the guilty in the blasts. But must it overlook the mob and police violence leading to it?
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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,
Forgotten Crimes
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.