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
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