But are these reasons enough when mass crimes of overwhelming magnitude are com- mitted in full public glare, when the administration and police are seen to be fully complicit in the crime, when the masterminds in positions of power and guilty of gross misdemeanors manage to regain power by cynically cashing-in on the carnage?

As far as the genocidal carnage of Gujarat 2002 is concerned, our system, tested to its limits in individual cases –Jessica Lal, Nitish Katara or Ruchika – locks its gaze on a state that for the past eight years has defied basic corrective measures, leave alone punish the guilty.

The Supreme Court of India, despite its initial reluctance to intervene, and subsequent delays, has continued to monitor the progress of justice in Gujarat. As recently as January 12, 2010 the welcome judgement of the apex court in the Sohrabuddin case, an extra-judicial killing by serving Gujarat officers under directions from their political bosses, reveals the extent to which senior police officials in the state will go to shield the guilty.

What has been the result of the apex court’s decision to keep a sharp eye on the justice process in Gujarat? An innovative option was set in motion by the Supreme Court in the major carnage cases with the appointment of a Special Investigation Team (SIT), with a former director of the CBI handpicked to head the crucial and sensitive job in March 2008. But the quality of the investigations conducted by the SIT over a year and a half – made public after charge-sheets were filed in these cases between July-August 2009 — reveal a severe lacunae in the probe. In the course of the eight day-to-day trials currently underway, the treatment of the special public prosecutors by judges and the SIT itself indicates a desire to weaken otherwise strong prosecution cases.

All this, and more, was brought to the attention of the apex court by Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) in October 2009. Finally on March 15, 2010, after four hearings in the matter, the shocking failure of SIT to maintain basic standards of professionalism and fairness led the court to ask solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam along with amicus curiae Harish Salve to assist the court in arriving at a decision on how to correct the shortfalls. As a legal support group for eye-witness survivors of the carnage, CJP has been at the forefront, engaged in the trials in Gujarat and also monitoring the investigations by the SIT.

What could be the reasons and motives behind the deliberate failures in investigations by the SIT? Is it the mere fact that the three Gujarat officers present in the body are stooges of the Modi administration? What are the reasons behind the fact that even the chairperson of SIT has himself ignored pleas of witnesses alleging torture and intimidation by SIT officials and partisan behaviour of some of the judges?

Are these shortfalls, detailed in our cover story this month, the story of a systemic rot so deep that it fails, despite the outstanding courage shown by victim survivors, to correct itself and deliver? Six years after the Supreme Court reaffirmed the faith of all right thinking Indians by delivering the Best Bakery verdict (April 12, 2004) transferring the trial out of the state, the very same court will hear a plea for the reconstitution of an investigative body set up by itself. The fact that the apex court will consider a plea of this sensitivity and magnitude sends a strong signal about the preparedness of some in the system to turn the spotlight on the rot, even if the blemishes revealed are painful.

Meanwhile, by the end of April 2010, the historic investigation ordered by the apex court against chief minister Narendra Modi and 61 others – accused of mass murder and criminal conspiracy – will also have been completed and hopefully criminal action launched. Towards that end, the chief minister has been summoned to depose before the SIT on March 21, 2010. This issue of CC is dedicated to the eyewitness survivors of independent India’s worst ever genocidal carnage, in homage to those who were mercilessly killed and in tribute to the grit and courage of those are determined to ensure that justice, though delayed, is not denied.