April-May 2012 
Year 18    No.165
Editorial


Demanding accountability

“No communal riot can last for more than 24 hours unless the state wants it to continue”.

Analysing and deconstructing mass targeted crimes for the past two decades (Communalism Combat was launched in August 1993 in the wake of the brute anti-Muslim pogrom that ripped Bombay’s
cosmopolitan ethos), we have consistently highlighted the complicity of the state apparatus – police, bureaucracy, even the proximate legislative and judicial wings – in unimaginable and unspeakable levels of violence which  are also patently illegal and unconstitutional. This complicity has gone unchecked thanks to the infiltration into our national psyche of a majoritarian, partisan way of looking at events, be it history or current affairs.

A handful of insiders such as Harsh Mander, NC Saxena, Chaman Lal, Vibhuti Narain Rai, Julio Ribeiro and Satish Sahney from within the establishment have had the moral courage and professional integrity to lend weight to the efforts of seasoned journalists, commentators and activists to unravel this disturbing phenomenon. In the mainstream national discourse, however, there is seeming reluctance to face the continuing communal corrosion of the state apparatus.

That is why the outcome and impact of the struggle for justice for the victims of the 2002 genocidal crimes in Gujarat is unique and unprecedented. The never before, or after, intervention by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) under former chief justice JS Verma, with its interim and final reports, facilitated judicial intervention in response to initiatives by survivors and legal rights groups like the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) or the invaluable Concerned Citizens Tribunal’s report, Crimes Against Humanity: two among the most significant interventions. The national media, print and electronic – with its credible coverage of the tragic events – too had its most shining moment. When push came to shove, even with a pro-Modi, BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in power at the Centre and a belligerent and unrepentant chief minister ominously declaring in early 2003, “Journalists who report on Gujarat will meet the fate of Daniel Pearl”, the media held its own.

Other national and international groups studied and documented the mass crimes committed in Gujarat with hitherto unmatched levels of state complicity. The Supreme Court, in its first ever significant pronouncement in the context of communal violence, not only transferred the Best Bakery case from Gujarat to Maharashtra for retrial in April 2004 but also chastised the “ Neros (who) fiddled while Gujarat burned”.

Now, ten years later, the CJP-backed Zakia Jafri criminal complaint – the result of an effort made since June 2006 – is finally being evaluated, judicially, for what it is: a unique effort to trace the chain of command responsibility for the absence of law and order in Gujarat from February 27 2002 until May 18, 2002. What was Gujarat 2002 really about? It was about a state allowing the tragedy at Godhra (train arson that claimed 59 levels) to bloom into full-scale reprisal violence in at least 14 of the state’s 25 districts. This resulted in not just the loss of 2,500 innocent lives,  but also daylight mass rape that continued for several hours, unprecedented police complicity, destruction of 19,000 homes in the state, and property and businesses loss for the minority worth at least Rs 3,500 crore (2002 figures).The levels of impunity that Gujarat 2002 typified crossed the bar – not very high after Delhi (1984), Hashimpura, UP (1989), Bhagalpur (1987) and Bombay (1992-1993) – for even a system as unaccountable as ours has been.

What is unique about this case – that to begin with prayed for the simple registration of a criminal complaint (FIR) against Gujarat’s chief executive and key cabinet colleagues, administrators, policemen and office bearers of rabid outfits – is that it has been able to martial the evidence provided by at least a dozen upright policemen and administrators who, through their sworn affidavits and depositions before the otherwise defunct Nanavati-Shah Commission, revealed the levels that the government of Gujarat sunk to, not simply in ignoring pleas for assistance when the violence erupted but also turning a deaf ear to its own state intelligence bureau’s warnings of a sinister build-up pre-Godhra.

Given the utterly lacklustre and unprofessional investigation conducted by the Special Investigation Team (SIT), appointed by the Supreme Court of India to investigate this complaint – CC brings to its readers a complete de-construction of the reports – the findings of the amicus curiae appointed by the Supreme Court of India, Raju Ramchandran are all the more significant. The SIT has filed a closure report while the amicus has opined that there are grounds to prosecute not just Modi but senior police officers as well. Indian criminal law provides for severe punishments for erring officials who conceal evidence, destroy records, wilfully disobey legal process, suppress evidence etc. Given the evidence contained in the SIT’s own otherwise seriously problematic closure report, the complainants believe there is more than enough to successfully take the battle for justice to its legal end. The case will now be argued before a magistrate in Ahmedabad through a protest petition within the next few months.

It will be the first time ever that a judicial assessment will be made of criminal culpability of the political top brass, administrators and police officers who literally looked the other way when marauding mobs mocked  the rule of law and the Indian Constitution, not just in Meghaninagar where Gulberg society is located , or Naroda Patiya where over 120 people were killed in a single day, but also in Vadodara, Sardarpura, Deepda Darwaza, Odh, Sanjeli, Randhikpur, Pandharwada, Kidiad, Sesan, Ghodasar etc.

The principles of justice and rule of law enshrined in the Constitution of India await their re-affirmation.

—Editors


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