Immediately after the attacks on churches and prayer
halls, on September 24-25 2008, the PUCL, Transparency International
India and other human rights groups had called for disciplinary action
against these officers as well as the commissioner of police, Bangalore.
On September 25, 2008 a report in The Times of India,
Bangalore, described how Inspector Ganapathy, who claimed that he was
acting on instructions from the higher echelons of the force, had begun
demanding land records, corporation licenses, etc from churches and
prayer halls. The inspector-general of police (western range), Ashit
Mohan Prasad, denied that any such instructions had been issued and was
quoted by the newspaper as saying that this was probably being done by
local officials at the behest of local, vested interests.
Instead of protecting the lives of persons belonging
to the minority communities that were being targeted, the police have
been found to have promulgated motivated orders under Section 144 of the
Code of Criminal Procedure (power to issue order in urgent cases of
nuisance or apprehended danger), facilitated the transportation of
stones for stone-throwing on victims and employed the indiscriminate use
of tear-gas shells. In almost all the cases of attacks on churches and
prayer halls, the police had violated the basic rules of police service
by obliterating all traces of the attacks and thus destroying the
evidence (Chapter II, Promulgation of Order under Section 144 CrPC,
Justice Saldanha Report). Subsequently, over 200 false cases were
registered against innocent members of the Christian and Muslim
communities.
“It is true that, mercifully, nobody died in these
incidents. The record however indicates that over 418 persons sustained
fractures, that as many as 198 persons sustained head injuries and that
over 1,000 persons sustained painful injuries to different parts of
their bodies, some of them extremely painful. More importantly, it was
these stones that were used to start every one of the incidents and it
is in this background that I record the clear finding that these stones,
which come under the category of dangerous implements or weapons, had
been procured and used by the state machinery in collusion with communal
elements… This can neither be defended, condoned or justified and can
only be condemned. I do not share the view that merely because the
individuals concerned and responsible for these atrocious criminal acts
cannot be singled out, the liability which devolves on the state is in
any way diluted” (Chapter III, The mystery of the Lethal Rock
Pebbles, Justice Saldanha Report).
“The police violence committed inside the primary
school at Kulshekar is unpardonable and unprecedented and does not seem
to have occurred anywhere else in the world; where police officers and
the police in partnership with the other assailants stormed a primary
school with 607 young children and a staff of over 35 women teachers and
nuns and resorted to unmitigated violence on them was savage, barbaric
and unpardonable” (Chapter XIX, Summary of Findings and Conclusions,
Justice Saldanha Report).
“The police storming the church at Pemannur,
obstructing and stopping the mass and assaulting the celebrant priest
and then standing on top of the altar and directing the assault of the
congregation followed by total vandalisation of the entire church and
the theft of all the holy objects by the SP, apart from being downright
criminal, are absolutely reprehensible. The further use of outdated
tear-gas shells containing toxic gas inside the church… can only be
defined as an attempt to murder. The same applies to the assault by the
police on the congregation after they were brought out of the church
with their hands above their heads, all of whom were heavily blee