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Justice is the real victim
Friday November 12 2004 18:45 IST

John Dayal

Zaheera Sheikh
Perhaps this was the closest we came in independent India to genetic modification by the Supreme Court in the criminal justice system, and predictably a price is being extracted, in many scarred reputations, in the retaliation by powerful entities fighting back all efforts to make them answerable to civilised society, and to Civil Society. Two years and eight months after Gujarat erupted in flames of hate, the guilty in the news are no longer Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who rules merrily as if nothing ever did happen. Nor does guilt seem to roost with the police which a hundred witnesses, among them a late minister and several officers had admitted to have been ordered to look the other way till a politically desired ratio of Muslim dead to Hindu victims had been established.

Above all, the focus has shifted from a morally corrupt and putrid judicial hierarchy in the state of Gujarat, from the junior magistracy to its High Court, which shamelessly fought on the side of the murderer and the rapist, and hounded the humane and the helpful from among the brave few of the State, and the outsiders who came in as volunteers of NGOs from Mumbai and New Delhi.

One of these was Teesta Setalvad, grand daughter of a former Attorney General of India, but better known for her monitoring and publishing the tapes of wireless messages that police officers of Mumbai sent to each other in the 1992-93 communal riots of Mumbai, the tapes clearly exposing the vicious anti-Muslim bias of the system. Teesta, and her monthly magazine Communalism Combat, which she co-edits with husband Javed Anand, have since then been carrying on an unceasing campaign against communalism, and against state patronage to one or the other side.

Many of us have been involved in the post-Godhra Gujarat, working in peace-making and medical relief, rehabilitation and advocacy. Teesta and some other NGOs have taken on the more onerous task of challenging lapses in the criminal justice system which had erroneously presumed that the ideology of its political masters was immortal. Part of the NGOs' exercise was the collation of accounts of the myriad cases of mass murders and arson, the tracing of witnesses and giving courage to surviving victims. Zaheera Sheikh of Baroda, so much in the news in the notorious Best Bakery Case, is just one of these victims, iconic though she may seem now. Zaheera had seen the mob gathering in the evening of March 1, 2002 in Baroda. As she told the media, it was a dance of death that continued all night. Four children and four women were burnt alive. Five survivors of the 15 were killed by the waiting mobs, two more chased and killed long after day break. Zaheera found the police hostile, abusive. For the rest of the year as she waited for justice, the magistracy, even the Gujarat High Court seemed against the victims, finding no case against the accused. The High Court felt "Teesta Setalvad and her colleague Mihir Desai of the Citizens for Justice and Peace were motivated by petty benefits and misusing persons such as Zaheera."

A disgusted and angry Supreme Court expunged those remarks when Teesta and her group eventually moved the highest court in the land, praying that which just about everybody mired so deep in the mess, justice could only be had outside Gujarat, perhaps in Mumbai. Zaheera found the safety of Mumbai and the receptivity of a new court warm enough to denounce the Baroda police for duress. Till now, when for reasons that may well remain a mystery for ever, she suddenly appeared in Vadodara and filed an affidavit before the Collector seeking police protection and alleging that she was being forced by Teesta to falsely identify innocent persons as accused in the re-trial being conducted in a Mumbai court.

Teesta has moved the Supreme Court once again, asking it for a comprehensive probe into the entire episode. The Supreme Court has so far not let know its mind on the issue. Elsewhere, the judicial system is running far behind the clock. Very few have been indicted in the mass murders of the Sikhs in the violence between October 31 and November 2, 1984 in Delhi and Kanpur following the assassination of Indira Gandhi. One does not know how many have been brought to justice in the 1992-93 Mumbai riots, or for that matter to the dozens of well known communal riots that have scorched India in the last 30 years or so. Many witnesses are now dead, as indeed many of the perpetrators too. Police personnel, guilty of conspiracy, at worst, as in Meerut, Mumbai and New Delhi, or indifferent, as in Moradabad, Aligarh and Bhiwandi, have retired, though the system remains culpable and on trial.

It brings no credit to the Republic, not when Europe has set up a Court of Criminal Justice, when the US has comprehensive anti-hate laws and did in fact trace, arrest try and jail the killer of the Sikh who was murdered in a hate crime in the wake of 9/11. (The fact that the entire US criminal justice and police system apologised to the minorities for that one crime of hate restored confidence in the public as nothing else could.)

Did the government or police of Gujarat buy up Zaheera, or merely coerced her once again? Did Zaheera turn greedy, presuming that Teesta and her NGOs were using her to make money, and she deserved her cut? Transparency is a desirable thing for everyone including NGOs, and many existing laws including the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act (FCRA) ensure that for the most NGOs remain on the straight and narrow. But there is something obscene in the alacrity with which the Chief Minister of Gujarat and his cohorts in the Sangh Parivar have jumped on this argument, implicating NGOs.

Much can be written about the vulnerability of witnesses, all witnesses, in India. It is almost routine for witnesses to turn hostile in court out of fear of thugs that rule us, in politics and from outside. Witnesses are shot dead in open court in North India. And often enough the State seems to enjoy the publicity when it can force a rape victim to marry the rapist as a just and reasonable solution. But here it goes beyond the issue of witness safety, or perjury. What is now on trial in Gujarat and the Supreme Court of India, is the role of Civil Society as a last ditch interventionist in restoring sanity in a system that goes berserk seemingly at will and on random pretext of caste, gender or religious bigotry. A State that has already withdrawn form much of the social sector and sometimes gives the appearance of also withdrawing from the law and order and criminal justice sector. It is no joke that most Delhi residential areas fortify themselves behind military cortina wire and hire private security guards rather than leave this vital task to the police.

In this fragile system, some semblance of equilibrium and popular trust has been created by the healthy relationship between Civil Society groups and a receptive and nurturing Supreme Court. The PIL and the Writ in Supreme Court by NGOs has calmed palpitating hearts, and restored confidence in the Rule of Law.

We cannot but suspect a conspiracy of powerful forces that have forced Zaheera, victim if ever there was, to renege on her own testimonies and to betray the Supreme Court more than she injures the work of Teesta in many other similar cases of Gujarat 2002.

Justice will be victim if the conspiracy goes unchallenged and undefeated.
 

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