“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.