23 years too late - Will all ’84 riots victims ever get justice?

The Tribune
28 March 2007
Editorial

23 years too late
- Will all ’84 riots victims ever get justice?

THE phrase “better late than never” becomes a meaningless jumble of words when the woman who saw her husband, son and son-in-law murdered brutally in the 1984 riots has to wait for 23 years to see three of the killers convicted. Harminder Kaur has relived the horror of that lynching all these years. The consolation that she has at least been alive to see this day is too meagre to be of much value. In this long long time, a whole generation has come and gone. Her daughter Harjinder had become a widow on that dark day during the holocaust at the age of 23. She had a daughter only two years old who became an orphan. The child has grown into a woman who has never known her father. We know that justice is not dispensed in a hurry in India. But this case went much further than that. After all, it took Harminder Kaur all of 12 years just to get an FIR registered. What a fight against the irresponsive system it has been for the traumatised widow!

It is not only a classic example of too late, but also of too little. Imagine nearly 3,000 persons being killed and conviction coming in only a handful of cases, like this one and the earlier life sentence passed on five persons in May 2005 for killing Baba Singh. And it is only the foot soldiers who are being served just desserts. Politicians who masterminded the horror have as good as escaped punishment. Everyone knows their role but they have managed to ensure that the trail goes cold and there is not “sufficient evidence” against them.

The 1984 riots were among the worst nightmares that Independent India has had to suffer, the others being the Babri mosque demolition and the Gujarat riots. Till all the guilty are accounted for, such incidents will continue fostering disillusionment, embarrassment and misgivings. The sooner the shame-faced country comes clean, the better.