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Monday, June 30, 2003
Posted by: Awaaz / 6/30/2003 10:44:21 AMSpeedy Injustice
The Times of India
June 30, 2003
Editorial
A democracy, text books will tell you, is characterised by the rule of law. This means that whenever a crime takes place, a case under the relevant law is registered, which is then investigated by the police. This is followed by a trial in which the court pronounces on the guilt or otherwise of the accused. India is evidently a democracy. Indeed, it is, going by numbers, the world's greatest. As such, it's a reasonable expectation that this simple routine "the so-called due process of law " will be carried out here in all criminal cases. On the face of it, this is exactly what happened in the infamous Best Bakery case in Vadodara in which 14 people were burnt alive in post-Godhra mob violence. At the end of the fast-court trial, however, the case has been summarily thrown out and all 21 accused released because 'there was not an iota of evidence' against them. Worse, the judge has accused the police of fabricating evidence to frame 'innocents'. The verdict implies that the police failed "quite deliberately" to apprehend those actually involved in carrying out the horrific outrage. Best Bakery was among the worst cases of violence in the aftermath of Godhra. It was also the first to come up for hearing. Long before the 44-day trial ended, it was apparent that the case was something of a sham: Of the 120 witnesses listed by the prosecution, more than a third never made it to the box. Of the 73 who did, more than half turned hostile. The prosecution's prime witness and main complainant, who was 'escorted' to the trial by the local BJP legislator, told the court that she'd neither seen nor heard anything about the incident... Cynics will argue that the verdict is no surprise. From the anti-Sikh carnage in Delhi in 1984 to the Bombay riots in 1992, 'riot' cases in India have long since ceased to result in convictions. Since most episodes of communal violence are politically engineered, shielding the guilty is very much an accepted part of the post-riot 'healing' process. For all that, the Gujarat case cannot be ignored. In the wake of post-Godhra violence, the National Human Rights Commission had pointedly asked the state government to hand over the investigation in five select cases, including Best Bakery, to the CBI. At the time, the Modi government had rejected the request on the ground that cast needless aspersions on the integrity and competence of the state police. After what the court said on Friday, Mr Modi will hopefully transfer the remaining cases to the Central agency. But this, given his record, is hoping for a lot.
ENDS.
Most Wanted: Justice Gujarat's Best Bakery case shows the criminal justice system at its worst
The Indian Express June 30, 2003 Editorial
Only one fact survived the 44-day trial in a fast track court. The fact of the carnage. Fourteen innocent people were burnt alive for sure, that day at the Best Bakery near Vadodara, in a Gujarat convulsed by riots. The rest is a phantom mob. At the end of a case in which it often seemed that the defence counsels' job was being done better by the prosecution, in which the prime witness was escorted in and out of court proceedings by a 'benefactor' MLA before she turned hostile and untraceable, and in which other hostile witnesses identified the accused as their 'saviours' when they didn't refuse to identify them at all, justice has been reduced to a ghost of itself. It will return to haunt the nation.
The Best Bakery massacre is one of the best documented of all the cases filed after the post-Godhra killings in Gujarat. Survivors publicly named those who attacked them. They petitioned the National Human Rights Commission, filed affidavits before the commission of inquiry, deposed before the Concerned Citizens Tribunal and travelled to Delhi to speak to the national media. It was the one case in which almost all the accused were in jail, the one moving ahead with lightning speed. The verdict was awaited not merely for the justice it would bring for the victims of the crime at Best Bakery. It was also going to send a message, and hold out hope, to survivors and victims' relatives of the other crimes that were also committed in Gujarat, at Naroda Patiya, Gulberg Society or at Sardarpura. It was to be the first step towards closure for a nation that has had to live with the memories of these events since.
The tidy acquittal of the accused in this case is a betrayal of faith. It must sound a nation-wide alarm. There wasn't even "an iota of evidence", lamented the judge, to convict the 21 accused. It must be asked whether it was because the witnesses were silenced by fear and coercion. Or due to the deliberately botched investigation that, as trial judge H.U. Mahida pointed out in his bitter 24-page judgement, is a common feature of all riot cases. What can be done to make sure justice is not miscarried again? Perhaps we need to look again at the suggestions made by the Justice V.S. Malimath committee that assigned a more pro-active role to the court "to search for the truth". We need to turn the searchlight on a process of justice that winds up in a blind alley when it doesn't drag on endlessly. Gujarat 2002 must be rescued from ending up like Delhi 1984 or Bombay 1993. Because the burden of unrequited justice is becoming too heavy for the nation.
ENDS.
'Gandhian Institute of Studies being denied funds'
By Our Special Correspondent
The Hindu June 30, 2003
NEW DELHI JUNE 29. Eminent academics have expressed concern over the manner in which the Union Human Resource Development Ministry (MHRD) and the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) were "denying funds" for the Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi, and trying to "take over" this autonomous institution.
In a statement here today, they urged the ICSSR to respect the "tradition of intellectual freedom", and its own rules which require "non-interference in the internal functioning of autonomous institutions that it aids".
According to the statement, the Institute had been facing a series of arbitrary administrative actions in the last four years. Its grant-in-aid was stopped by the ICSSR in 1999 "under directions from the MHRD" and had since remained suspended though all audit objections were cleared and the Institute's registration renewed.
Also, attempts were made to deregister or dissolve the Institute's parent Society, but the move was stayed by the court. And, recently, the ICSSR Member-Secretary is said to have written to the State Chief Secretary claiming that the Institute was located on Central Government land and that all its assets, including the building, had been created out of Government grants.
Billing these developments as a "bid to take over" an autonomous institution by the ICSSR, the signatories to the statement categorically stated that there was no truth in the ICSSR Member-Secretary's contention as the land on which the Institute stood was gifted by the Sarva Seva Sangh and the building belonged to the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi.
Of the view that such interference in the affairs of the Institute did not augur well for independent social science and autonomous research institutions in the country, they likened it to Emergency days.
Their contention was that since the registration of the Society had been renewed, the ICSSR should stop interfering in its internal affairs, and restore the annual grant because no administrative justification existed for withholding it.
The signatories to the statement are the Director of the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, Partha Chatterjee; the former Chairman of ICSSR, Rajni Kothari; the former Member-Secretary of ICSSR, T. N. Madan; the former directors of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, Ashis Nandy and D. L. Sheth; the former director of the Madras Institute of Development Studies, A. Vaidyanathan; and Andre Beteille, a national fellow of the ICSSR.
ENDS.
Menace of Moditva
The Hindustan Times Monday, June 30, 2003
Amulya Ganguli
The smiling pictures of Narendra Modi, Rajnath Singh, Murli Manohar Joshi and Sushma Swaraj on the sidelines of the BJP's recent chintan baithak gave the impression of a contented parivar. There may have been reason enough. Modi was probably telling the other three how well his brand of fascism was doing in Gujarat.
Modi's first success has been to convince the National Commission for Minorities that no survey of Christians is being conducted in the state. While the NCM has naively accepted the official denial, there have been renewed reports of how inquiries are being made at various Christian institutions about their sources of funds.
The sinister nature of such surveys cannot be overstated. They are reminiscent of the way Jewish houses and establishments were identified in Nazi Germany. It is necessary to remember a chilling passage in the Srikrishna Commission's report on the Mumbai riots. It said: "The attacks on Muslims by the Shiv Sainiks were mounted with military precision with a list of establishments and voters' list in hand." Details about individuals and institutions belonging to the minority communities are not safe, therefore, in the hands of a government with a questionable reputation for impartial behaviour.
Modi's second success has been virtually to hobble the inquiry into the riots. His first attempt at scuttling it was by appointing K.G. Shah to conduct the investigations. As a TADA judge in 1985, Shah had sentenced five Muslims to death. Responding to an appeal in this case, the Supreme Court acquitted all the accused in 1990, stating that Shah's "findings were not based on appreciation of evidence but on imagination".
Once this unflattering reference to Shah's judicial acumen was unearthed and reported in the media, the Centre appointed G.T. Nanavati to head the commission while Shah remained on the panel. Unfortunately, however, following Nanavati's comment that he hadn't yet found any evidence of the involvement of the VHP or Bajrang Dal in the riots or of police inaction, there have been any number of reports of how the witnesses are being intimidated.
So much so that the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had to be assured by Gujarat's director-general of police that adequate protection would be provided to the victims of the riots so that they can depose 'freely and fearlessly' before the commission. The assurance was in the context of 'good conduct' certificates given to the police by several witnesses after they had reportedly been told to assemble at the police headquarters where they were apparently tutored what to say.
Now that these hamhanded efforts to peddle untruth before the commission have come to light, it is possible that at least some witnesses will summon enough courage to speak their minds. But since it is quite clear that serious attempts were being made to subvert the investigations, the nature of the Modi government has been exposed.
Moreover, this wasn't its first attempt at the subversion of a legal process. There had been persistent reports during the riots, which lasted for nearly two-and-a-half months, that the police had been told to lie low by the state's political leadership. Even after the riots ended, there were reports about how political bias was undermining law and order in the state.
For instance, a former chairman of the NHRC, JS Verma, told a TV interviewer that he wrote to the prime minister to complain about the Centre's failure "to make things better" in Gujarat. Verma had evidently lost faith in the Modi government's ability or willingness to improve conditions in the state. At about the same time, Poornima Advani, chairperson of the National Commission for Women, noted that "not many FIRs have been registered" against suspected rioters while there had been no convictions till then in the rape cases.
Similarly, the Human Rights Watch expressed surprise that "no convictions" had taken place even months after the riots had ended and little was provided by way of relief to the victims. It complained that "although the Indian government initially boasted of thousands of arrests following the attacks, most of those arrested have since been released on bail, acquitted or simply let off".
After noting that Muslims had been charged under POTA, the organisation said that this law had not been used against Hindus. It said that "the POTA charges show the extent of the bias in the legal system in Gujarat. The rule of law cannot be draconian for some and non-existent for others".
Even if any comment on police inaction during the riots can await the Nanavati Commission's verdict, it is clear that, first, the Modi government hadn't been too active in nabbing the guilty and, secondly, it sought to influence the witnesses into being economical with the truth. As an upholder of rajdharma, therefore, the doctrine of impartiality which the prime minister had wanted Modi to follow, the state government has been a dismal failure.
What is important is that it wasn't a failure of ability. It was a deliberate dereliction of duty based, essentially, on the BJP's perception of minorities as second-class citizens. As a model of what can be expected in a state where the BJP is in a majority, Gujarat is a prime example. And it is a matter of concern that the chief exponent of this deadly model is none other than a person whom the BJP regards as a hero.
Since neither fairness nor impartiality can be expected from the Modi government, it is of the utmost importance that the Nanavati Commission devotes itself with an even greater sense of urgency than before to unearth the truth. It must have become aware by now that there are powerful forces at work whose aim is to frustrate its efforts. Had there been no NHRC or a free press, these forces would have undoubtedly succeeded in presenting a distorted picture of what happened during the riots.
After all, the commission would have finished its work in a few months' time and its members would have been off to attend to other duties. But any of the witnesses, who dared to depose against the police or identify their attackers, would have had to stay on in Gujarat and face harassment or worse. But now that there is a countrywide awareness of the nefarious efforts that were being made behind the scenes, one can expect that at least some of the witnesses will be brave enough to tell the truth. The commission, too, should go out of its way to assure them of their safety.
The NGOs have an important role to play in this context. Instead of boycotting the commission, as some of them are doing, they should forsake such a defeatist attitude and try all the harder to help it discover the truth by standing by the scared witnesses. The civil administration may have failed to do its duty in Gujarat - or was made to fail by its political masters. But the legal system should succeed. Otherwise, fascism would continue to flourish in the hapless state.
ENDS.
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