(The Times of India
14 Aug 2007)
Nab Mumbai's guilty
by Jyoti Punwani
There are more than a handful of individuals who can provide crucial information in trying the accused in the January 1993 Mumbai riots. For instance, the person whose testimony can help try Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray is now social justice minister in Vilasrao Deshmukh's cabinet.
According to Srikrishna commission's report into the Mumbai riots (Vol II, Para 9.6) Chandrakant Handore was present when Thackeray instructed his cadre to retaliate. According to the testimony of Mahanagar reporter Yuvraj Mohite, Handore as the mayor had gone with him to Matoshree to get Thackeray to sign an appeal for peace when the January riots had just begun.
Mohite's testimony says that the Shiv Sena chief was directing the violence over the phone and to his lieutenants in person. After they came out, Mohite and his editor Nikhil Wagle asked Handore to report the matter to the chief minister. Handore was not inclined to do that. Mohite testified before the Srikrishna commission; Handore didn't. Nor did he cooperate with the Special Task Force (STF) set up by Maharashtra's home minis-ter Chhagan Bhujbal in 2000 to implement the Srikrishna commission report.
Handore is not the only person who would know the inside story on the riots. There is ex-Sena MLA Jaywant Parab, who is known to be close to former Sena strongman Narayan Rane, now revenue minister. Parab is co-accused with former Sena MLA Madhukar Sarpotdar in a case involving a procession taken out in December 1992 without police permission, in which inflammatory slogans were allegedly shouted and speeches made. The case is still on.
Then there's Eknath Gaekwad, minister of state for health in Deshmukh's first cabinet and now a Congress MP. According to one testimony before the commission, Gaekwad, on January 14, 1993, along with Sena MLA Kalidas Kolambekar, led a 4,000-strong procession to the Antop Hill police station demanding the release of the three Shiv Sainiks arrested for killing three Muslims in a Maruti car. Eyewitnesses are still to be examined in this case.
Drowned in the clamour for reviving old and filing new cases against Sena lea-ders lies the nitty-gritty that ensures convictions: faultless police procedures and unquestionable evidence. Justice Sri-krishna wasn't going soft on the Sena when he recommended 'strict action' against 31 policemen and not a single politician. He held Thackeray responsible for the second phase of the riots. The Bombay high court had found nothing objectionable in Thac-keray's editorials in Saamna during the riots and the Supreme Court had dismissed the appeal against this judgment. The only cases the commission said should be reopened were those police had closed. This was despite the evidence to arrest the rioters in the form of testimonies before the commission.
If the government were to implement just these recommendations - act against the 31 policemen, reopen closed cases, and compensate the families of missing persons - it would have done enough.
The government preferred to assess the situation through the eyes of the police. In 2001, when former commissioner of
police (ACP in 1993) R D Tyagi and his team were chargesheeted for murder, an outcry went up against ''police demoralisation''.
The government has exonerated 11 of the 31 policemen, overlooking those who testified against them before the commission. Ten of them have been punished. The minimum punishment is a reprimand - for a constable indicted for handing over a deaf and dumb boy to a mob who killed him. The maximum, keeping the delinquent on the minimum pay scale for five years, is for a constable found rioting with a sword, with Sena corporator Milind Vaidya. Seven policemen, charged with murder, are now acquitted or discharged. Meanwhile, STF has reopened only five of the 1,358 cases closed by the police.
Chief minister Deshmukh has now announced the setting up of a 'riot cell' to look afresh at riot cases. This will be the third such committee to be manned by policemen, who will judge the actions of their own colleagues. Their findings will then be passed off as implementation of the report.
The writer is a political commentator.
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