India Today
Don't hide the sins of guilty cops
Jyoti Punwani | August 8, 2011
The Srikrishna Commission had exposed the misdeeds of Mumbai Police in the Suleman Bakery case.
Can a commander order a raid and, when it leaves unarmed innocents dead, wash his hands of it, arguing that he didn't order their killing? If a police team assaults and shoots unarmed persons, can only those who actually used their guns be charged with murder, and the rest get away? What makes magistrates and judges, right up to the Supreme Court, believe police versions of an incident, even though the police can produce no evidence to back their claims, and victims tell a completely different story? Finally, who is a government dutybound to protect: its police, or the unarmed citizens who fall victim to the police? When both governments and courts reject the victims' pleas, whom should they turn to? The case of Ram Dev Tyagi, former Police Commissioner of Mumbai, and the senior-most officer to be indicted by the Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry into the 1992-93 Mumbai riots, raises all these questions. In 2001, Tyagi was charged with murder for the raid on the wellknown Suleman Usman Bakery on Md Ali Road, Mumbai's old Muslim quarter. The raid, carried out during the 1992-93 riots by Tyagi's Special Operations squad under his orders, was said to be a response to Sten-gun wielding terrorists firing on the police from the terrace of the bakery. But the 17 policemen who raided the bakery and its adjacent madarsa, found neither terrorists nor Sten-guns.
Yet, in the 20 minutes they were there, they killed eight unarmed Muslims with no criminal record.
Brutality
Two years after he was charged, the sessions court discharged Tyagi and eight of his co-accused, even before a trial could be held. Last month, the Supreme Court upheld the discharge. Tyagi and all his co-accused, charged under Sec 302 IPC, spent not a moment in custody, nor were any of them suspended.
From the trial court to the high court to the highest court, they all accepted Tyagi's defence that he neither entered the bakery, nor did he order his men to kill its inmates. In fact, he maintained that he had told them to use 'minimum force'. Here's how his men implemented this order. They shot dead a bakery worker pleading at their feet that he was neither Pakistani nor Kashmiri, but "a bhaiyya from Jaunpur". They swung a handicapped maulana over a banister, pulled him back, dragged him down the stairs, shot him, and left him to bleed to death pleading for water. Another maulana was hit with a bench.
The survivors of the raid and Tyagi were both cross-examined in front of the Srikrishna Commission. Justice Srikrishna, then a sitting judge of the Bombay High Court, visited the site, concluded that the police story didn't inspire credence, and indicted Tyagi and his two assistants. The FIR lodged against Tyagi and his 17 men said that the police story had been fabricated to justify the unprovoked firing.
Wireless messages showing that Tyagi was in complete and exclusive command of the situation from beginning to end, were part of the chargesheet. So, also post-mortem reports that showed injuries over and above bullet wounds.
Then what made the courts trying the accused policemen give credence to their story? What made them say Tyagi was just doing his duty, and praise the restraint of those policemen who didn't use their guns - against unarmed men? The courts made out as if waiting outside the bakery, Tyagi could play no role; as if of the 17 who barged into the bakery, nine cops made a personal decision to fire, with the rest simply standing by.
Reading the judgments, it becomes clear that the defence lawyers succeeded in convincing the courts, years later, when the riots had become a distant memory, that a "civil war like" situation had then prevailed over the city. They pointed out that in the area where the Bakery stands, bombs had been thrown at the commissioner (one had); that mobs were on the street, using women as shields…In short, the police version must have made absolute sense given the fact that the Bakery was in a Muslim area. For the same reason, Mumbaikars had believed the first reports of the incident in January 1993. The riots were on, and the Suleman Usman Bakery incident was seen as just one more instance of Muslim rage following the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
It needed a commission, hearing account after account of confrontations between police and Muslims, to bring to light how a communalised police force had targeted Muslims often without provocation.
Injustice
But it's as though for the state, the commission never existed. Citizens had to file a PIL to get its recommendations implemented.
It was only after the then Chief Justice A. S. Anand asked what action had been taken against Tyagi, that the Maharashtra government filed a case of murder against him. Its half- hearted prosecution led to his discharge. "The law has taken its course," declared the secular Congress- NCP government and dropped the case. It was one of the survivors of the raid, a madarsa teacher who still bears the scars of the police assault on him, who appealed against the discharge all the way to the Supreme Court, aided by lawyers who fought free of cost.
The proposed Communal Violence Bill is meant to remedy such acts of a communalised State. Under it, a National Authority could be approached, a special public prosecutor appointed, the victims kept informed at every step. For people like Tyagi, a new offence has been created - "breach of command responsibility". Alas, a close reading of the offence shows that other Tyagis will also get away. For, the offence will only be proved if the commanding officer - i) knew that those under him would commit an act of communal violence; and, ii) failed to take necessary measures to prevent the offence, or, failed to submit the matter to the competent authorities for investigation and prosecution.
Tragedy
Which commanding officer would know the extent to which his men would act on their communal prejudices? The survivors of this raid recounted how the commandoes taunted them about being Muslims and hence owning weapons, being trained to use them, and being loyal to Pakistan.
These policemen were as communal as the rest of their colleagues in the force.
Nevertheless, how could Tyagi have known that they would savage the unarmed Muslims they confronted? And, even if an officer does expect such behaviour, will he admit to doing so? Could Tyagi have prevented this carnage? The raid was over in 20 minutes, probably too short a time to intervene.
Did he fail to submit the matter to the competent authorities? The outcome of the raid cried out for investigation: eight unarmed men dead, 12 wounded, no weapons recovered, no terrorists found.
Within a month, the case was indeed transferred - to the DCB, CID, headed by Tyagi! The only prosecution filed was against the inmates rounded up from the spot. The FIR against Tyagi states that this was a bogus case. Yet, the government didn't think it necessary to drop it. The victims had to approach the court, which discharged them three months back. For 18 years, they had to turn up in court as accused for a crime they didn't commit.
The Suleman Usman Bakery raid stands alongside the blinding of Bhagalpur's criminals and the mass killing of Maliana's Muslims. Justice Srikrishna described it as "not befitting the police force of any civilised, democratic state." But our democratic State backed the police all the way, as it undoubtedly will when the remaining policemen stand trial. The tragedy is that our courts too failed to do justice to the victims. Can they be blamed for ascribing this to their being Muslim, forgetting that it was a tilakdhari Hindu judge who had given them the first hope of justice?
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