1993: two Bombay stories
Tuesday July 31 2007 07:21 IST
newindpress.com
Farah Baria
It’s a verdict that gives ‘justice delayed’ a whole new definition. Still, after 15 years, 14,000 pages of evidence, a 10,000-page charge sheet and a 3000-page sentence, 100 people will pay for the brutal murder of 257 in the Bombay blasts of 1993: twelve with their lives, others with life sentences and varying jail terms. Blood for blood, in the cold-blooded language of terrorism. And yet, it seems, not every drop has been accounted for. “While the blast convicts have got capital punishment, those who killed innocent Muslims in the Mumbai riots are free,” says Abdusatar Yusuf Sheikh, senior secretary of the All India Personal Law Board. This, of course, is an absurd argument. Fortunately for us all, the law is not an exercise in tit-for-tat, which is why one crime cannot possibly justify another. Nevertheless, despite what Ujwal Nikam, public prosecutor in the Bombay Blasts trial, will have us believe, these two are irrevocably linked. Indeed, many of the key conspirators in the bombings were victims of the deadly pogrom that gutted Mumbai in December 1992 and January 1993. They were not the only ones. About 900 citizens were killed in the blood bath after the demolition of the Babri Masjid — 275 Hindus, 575 Muslims — nearly three times the toll of the bombs that followed them. The great majority were victims of stabbing, while others succumbed to arson, mob violence and shootouts — not the cold, impersonal genocide of terrorism, but the vindictive, visceral violence of loathing, the kind that turns neighbours into butchers and friends into murderers. Worse, 356 others — mostly Muslims — were actually killed in police firing by trigger-happy protectors of the law, with the active support of several political leaders.
Then, to add insult to injury, the ‘Muslim’ bomb trial was conducted in a high-profile TADA court, while the ‘Hindu’ riot trial was quietly consigned to a commission of inquiry — that classic Indian euphemism for official stonewalling. Headed by Justice B.N. Srikrishna, a retired Supreme Court judge, the commission was, predictably, denied the authority to prosecute the guilty. Presumably, its function was to be purely therapeutic, a chance for victims to sob on a sympathetic judicial shoulder. But Justice Srikrishna — a devout Hindu — went beyond the call of dharma, to equal the task of the TADA Court. For five gruelling years, the judge summoned 502 witnesses, whose depositions ran into 9655 pages, painstakingly recorded 2903 documents totalling about 15,000 sheets of evidence, and passed 536 orders to present a 700-page report on February 16, 1998. It is a damning document, indicting 31 policemen, an “effete” political leadership that waffled over arresting the violence, and several saffron leaders including Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray “who, like a veteran general, commanded his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organised attacks against Muslims.” Also accused are the BJP’s Gopinath Munde, Madhukar Sarpotdar and Ram Naik, for blatantly inciting the riots. Although Sarpotdar and Munde were later booked under the National Security Act and TADA for possession of illegal weapons, the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition that came to power in 1995 dropped all cases against the four. Subsequently, in January 1996, the Maharashtra government brazenly disbanded the commission altogether.
It was forced to revive it in May 1996 after a public outcry. But perhaps the biggest blow to justice was the acquittal of former Joint Police Commissioner R.D. Tyagi, charged with killing nine young Muslim boys in the Suleiman Usman Bakery operation. All nine, says the report, were “shot point-blank and in cold blood”. The police ultimately charged Tyagi, but the prosecution was so feeble that he and eight other accomplices were acquitted by a sessions court judge for lack of substantial evidence. Not surprisingly, the Shiv Sena has accused Justice Srikrishna of being “biased against Hindus” and many of the khaki offenders have audaciously been promoted to plum posts. But when it comes to covering up, even politicians make faithful bedfellows —so Maharashtra’s ruling Congress government obligingly “disagreed with the conclusions of the commission,” and conveniently buried the report along with its skeletons, for “fear” that it might “re-open old wounds”. Now, pushed against the TADA court wall by minority ire, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh has promised to implement it, nearly a decade later.
His healing formula: another committee to “identify the alleged lapses” in the implementation of the Commission’s report. But this, of course, is just another classic eyewash because, if implemented, Srikrishna’s entire exercise will have to be repeated in a court of law — a logistical farce, since prosecuting a government servant requires the sanction of the government. Yet, India simply cannot afford to ignore the Srikrishna Commission Report. Here’s why: Firstly, despite political fears that it may “re-open old wounds”, it will actually complete the cauterisation begun by the bomb blast verdict. Pain is inevitable but is part of the healing process. It will establish, once and for all, that terrorism in any form will not be tolerated even if it has official sanction. It will restore the secular spirit of India’s most liberal city, where sweat has always been more important than blood, and the cosmopolitan has always superseded the communal. It will ensure that even justice delayed is better than no justice at all. But, most importantly, it will prove that those in power are not above the law — a fundamental precept of any democratic system. This is precisely why the Srikrishna Commission is much more than a tit-for-tat trial to mollify aggrieved Muslims. And also why ignoring it is a dangerous precedent for the future of Indian democracy.
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