Relief and Rehabilitation
1 Relief
1.1. From
the night of February 28, when brutal and systematic attacks against
targeted sections of the Muslims population in Ahmedabad city began,
distressed residents were shepherded out of their homes and localities,
often in hired buses, in the dead of the night by community leaders.
Over night, relief camps came up in the city and by March 5 a staggering
98,000 refugees were housed there. Even by the admission of the district
magistrate and collector of Ahmedabad, there were 66,000 refugees in
these camps. In none of these efforts was any state presence visible.
1.2. By
March 1, a similar situation was observed in over one dozen districts of
Gujarat (see Detailed Annexures: List of Camps, Volume III).
Independent sources show that outside Ahmedabad, as many as 76,000
refugees were housed in camps all over the state. Official figures put
this amount at about 25,000. In any event, even by the state
government’s own assessment, at least 91,000 persons were displaced as a
direct result of the carnage. Independent assessments put these at
closer to 1,74,000 refugees in the state of Gujarat after the first
flush of brutal violence; a staggering figure by any standards. Besides,
not all the survivors moved into camps— many went to the homes of their
relatives and so on. Including them in the calculation, independent
estimates put the total number of displaced Muslims in Gujarat at not
less that 2,50,000.
1.3. In the
days following the first bout of brutal violence, agents of the state,
notably the collectors/district magistrates of Ahmedabad, Vadodara,
Mehsana, Himmatnagar, Anand, Sabarkantha, Banaskantha, Bharuch and
Ankleshwar districts, as also the officials of some police stations,
obstructed truckloads of privately mobilised relief material — milk,
foodgrains, etc. — from reaching the camps. Thereafter, the same
officials harassed and penalised the refugees by, among other things,
not giving them sufficient food. The conduct of these IAS and IPS
officials calls for strong penal action.
1.4. The
Tribunal is greatly concerned and outraged by the fact that only the
leadership of the Muslim community was involved in the running of the
relief camps because others did not come forward. Though some non-Muslim
NGOs did contribute substantial amounts of aid to these relief camps
right until August, the vast bulk of relief assistance to the refugees
came from the community itself.
1.5. The
government is under a constitutional obligation to protect the basic
rights of every citizen and duty bound to start and run relief camps for
the violence affected. Instead, for days and weeks, the Gujarat
government adamantly refused even to recognise the existence of refugees
(a direct consequence of the state sponsored carnage). It refused to
register the relief camps and denied relief assistance — water, food,
medical aid, sanitation — from state coffers.
1.6. In
blatant and brazen contrast to the Gujarat state’s attitude to the
earthquake victims just one year earlier, when the ghastly earthquake of
January 26, 2001 rocked the state, this time neither the Gujarat
government nor the government of India applied to the UN and other
international agencies for relief and rehabilitation measures.
1.7.
Equally, the Tribunal notes with concern and anguish that an
insignificant number of international aid agencies came forward in the
case of the Gujarat carnage, to help the victims. Given the scale of the
state-perpetrated violence and given the response of international aid
agencies to such carnages in other areas in the past, it was incumbent
on the United Nations relief agencies, including the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF),
the World Food Programme (WFP), the World Health Organisation (WHO), and
the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),
as well as international humanitarian organisations, to provide relief
and rehabilitation assistance to all those displaced and dispossessed by
the communal carnage in Gujarat, without discrimination. That this did
not happen speaks volumes about the political dimensions of aid and
intervention by foreign countries when mass crimes of this kind occur.
1.8.
Similarly, the fact that major national newspapers which, during such
calamities in the past, have always set up independent relief funds, did
not do so in the context of Gujarat 2002, speaks for the silence and
complicity that surrounds relief and rehabilitation of the survivors of
the Gujarat carnage. This bodes ill for India’s polity.
1.9. Six
relief camps had to approach the Gujarat High Court (special civil
applications 3773 of 2002) through a writ petition — supported by the
Citizens for Justice and Peace — and a senior advocate had to be
flown down from Mumbai for arguments, before the Gujarat government gave
an assurance in court that it assumes responsibility for providing
adequate relief to the camps — food, water (30 litres per person per
day), public toilets, medical aid, timely payment of rupees 5 per person
per day and shamianas for protection from the scorching heat.
Justice Pradeep PB Majmudar delivered the order on this writ petition on
April 22, 2002. The petition had also urged army protection for the
relief camps since, on more than one occasion, instigated by politicians
belonging to the ruling party and the police, relief camps had been
attacked.
1.10. The
attitude of the chief minister of Gujarat, Shri Modi and that of his
cabinet colleagues obviously percolated down to the entire state
administration and police, towards innocent persons made victims of a
state sponsored carnage and rendered refugees in their own homes and
homelands, is nothing short of shocking. For this alone, Shri Modi and
his cabinet are guilty of gross dereliction of their constitutional
obligation and duty.
1.11. On
March 6, none less than Gujarat’s minister for food and civil supplies,
Shri Bharat Barot had the temerity to state in a much publicised
interview that since Hindus in his constituency, living close to the
Dariakhan Ghumbat camp in Ahmedabad, felt insecure with so many Muslims
living in a camp nearby, the camp should be closed down.
1.12. As
recently as September 9, at Becharaji, Mehsana, during his Gujarat
Gaurav Yatra, none other than the chief minister made a shocking
public declaration: ‘‘What should we do? Run relief camps for them? Do
we want to open baby producing centres?’’
1.13. The
first time that the Shri Modi condescended to visit the Shah-e-Alam
Relief Camp in Ahmedabad city was a full month after the carnage broke
out, on April 4.
1.14. Again
on May 31, a public interest litigation (special civil application
number 5311 of 2002) had to be filed in the Gujarat High Court by the
Citizens for Justice and Peace and Communalism Combat to
elicit an assurance from the state that relief camps would not be
forcibly closed down. On June 4, the petitioners obtained an oral
assurance from the government pleader that there would be no closure of
the camps at least until June 30, 2002. It was on this precise date,
that the state government, through the collector of Ahmedabad, began
exerting pressure on camps and threatened penal measures against camp
managers, if they did not ‘voluntarily’ sign a statement saying they
wished to close down their camps. On June 26, when the matter came up
for hearing, the petitioners, several camp managers and refugees filed
25 affidavits, detailing the extent of abdication of primary duty by the
state and shocking instances of coercion and pressure being used against
refugees and camp managers.
1.15. Due to
the callous attitude of the government and threats of penal action
against individuals, a camp at Jahangirnagar, Vatwa was forced to shut
down on June 1. As a result, over 600 refugees were forced to reside
under the open sky despite heavy rainfall. None of these refugees had
until mid-May received any compensation for the destruction of their
homes. In a way, the pending writ petition, ensured resumption of
rations and shifting of some of the refugees to camps in permanent
places like the Haj House and Qureshinagar. Shri Javed Munnabhai Sheikh,
the administrator of the Patrewali Masjid relief camp, Saraspur,
Ahmedabad was threatened directly by the collector on the issue of the
number of refugees living there. Invariably, the collector would come
for a headcount in the afternoon – when some of the refugees would have
gone out for a few hours — not in the morning or at night. This was a
deliberate ploy used by the state administration to discredit the camps.
While the Tribunal has detailed some of the specific instances where
direct coercion was used to threaten camp managers to shut down, there
was not a single relief camp in Gujarat where officials did not try and
browbeat the managers. Camps in rural areas were forcibly shut down in
mid-May itself. This appears to be a clear ploy on the part of the
Gujarat government to portray an image of normalcy, when there is
nothing about Gujarat that is normal even now.
1.16. The
writ petition pertaining to relief is still alive before the Gujarat
High Court. To enable a proper assessment of the condition of the
refugees and the scope and extent of government rehabilitation, the
petitioners also conducted a detailed, state wide refugee survey. They
presented this before the court in the form of an affidavit and urged
that a monitoring committee for rehabilitation be put in place. They
have also demanded that the court ask for complete accountability from
the Gujarat government regarding the Rs. 150-crore rehabilitation
package announced by the Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee when
he visited Gujarat on April 4.
1.17.
Certain aspects of the survey are important. It points out that apart
from the nearly 20,000 persons who remained in camps in early-May within
Ahmedabad city (only 13,500 as per government figures), another
2,000-odd persons were still living in camps located elsewhere in the
state, but they all had ceased to exist for the government. These camps
– Nandasan, Gandhinagar district (419 persons), Dasaj, Mehsana district
(400 persons), Lunava, Shivali, Gunja near Visnagar, and Unjha, all in
Mehsana district (with100 persons, 400 persons, 50 persons and 250
persons respectively), Lunavada, Panchmahal district (460 persons), and
Vadali, Sabarkantha district (200 persons) – were summarily closed down
between mid-May and early July and the government assumed no
responsibility for their relief or rehabilitation needs. The state
admited in court that there are only 13,482 refugees in the state (all
of them in Ahmedabad city). To these, the state was then supplying
foodgrains grudgingly through the district collector; with only
three-four days ration being dished out at a time. This is not, however,
an accurate picture of the number of displaced persons. The actions of
the state government on the ground, therefore, run contrary to their
assurances made to the court. Moreover, the actions of the state
government and its agencies in coercively shutting down relief camps is
malafide, given the abject refusal of the government of Gujarat and its
chief executive, Shri Modi, to actively engage in any rehabilitation or
reconciliatory measures. The reluctance of the Gujarat government to
provide relief to the inmates of these camps (where even water and
foodgrains had to be obtained through court orders), and its subsequent
use of coercion to close them down, is intrinsically connected to an
abject and crude refusal to concern itself with rehabilitation of it’s
citizenry.
1.18. None
will argue that life in a relief camp should continue forever. But the
scale and brutality of the violence at a dozen places across the state
of Gujarat, where victims were quartered, and girls and women gang raped
before being burnt to ashes to destroy evidence, requires re-location of
the victim-survivors to more conducive surroundings where life, liberty
and security can be somewhat assured. Hence the attitude of the Gujarat
government in coercively closing down camps, thus forcing victims to
‘disappear’, is shocking, to say the least. Moreover, it is linked to
the issue of the refusal of the government to rehabilitate the victims
of the carnage. Both are violations of the just and humane principles
underlying Indian constitutional law and international covenants related
to violence, refugees and state responsibility.
2. Compensation
2.1. This
brings us to the crucial issue of compensation for the enormous human
and material loss during such mass man-made disasters and crimes. Can
the amount of Rs. 1.5 lakh ever compensate for the loss of a life
deliberately, cruelly and brutally taken away? What when a family loses
not one but over five family members, men and women, especially those
who are in the prime of their lives, leaving bitter heirs behind? What
about the loss of livelihood, dignity, a sense of family and security?
2.2. The
Gujarat government showed itself in a crudely partisan and
anti-constitutional light when it initially announced discriminatory
amounts of compensation for the survivors of the Godhra tragedy and the
post-Godhra carnage.
2.3. The
history of compensation in our country is a chequered one. Each time
there are mass crimes of the kind of the carnage witnessed in Gujarat,
governments have issued GRs announcing compensation. In Mumbai, after
the 1992 violence, largely against the minorities, the government
announced compensation to the tune of Rs. 2 lakh for every life lost.
Obtaining this amount by the bereaved families was facilitated by NGOs
who continually put pressure on the government. However, the family
members of at least 174 "missing persons", whose bodies were either not
found or deliberately burnt beyond recognition, have, till date, been
denied this compensation. In addition to this, the government’s
insistence that a Rs. 7,000 bond be given by the survivors lends further
indignity and injustice to the paltry compensation.
2.4. A
survivor of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi was granted Rs. 2 lakh as
compensation ten years after the pogrom, by an order of the Delhi High
Court.
2.5. The
death of a military officer under mysterious circumstances, due to gross
negligence and callousness, saw the Supreme Court awarding Rs. 6 lakh to
the widow of the deceased (Charanjit Kaur v/s Union of India AIR SC,
1994). In a historic judgement by the Supreme Court in DK Basu v/s State
of West Bengal, 1996, the court laid down the fundamental principles of
monetary compensation, ruling that appropriate compensation is "indeed
an effective and sometimes, perhaps, the only suitable remedy for
redressal of the established infringement of the fundamental right to
life of a citizen by a public servant." The court also held that in the
assessment of compensation, the emphasis should be on the compensatory
and not on the punitive element. The award of compensation in public law
jurisdiction is also without any prejudice to any other civil action for
damages.
2.6. These
are just a few of the judicial awards of compensation made in a variety
of cases. The Gujarat high court itself had awarded Rs. 2 lakh as
interim compensation to the widow of Narendrasinh Zala, a 29-year-old
assistant intelligence officer, who was subjected to mental and
psychological torture that led to his death in police custody in 1997. (Dharmishtaben
Narendrasinh Zala v/s. State of Gujarat 1997).
In this case, the court ruled that
when great loss and injustice is caused to a person who has lost her
beloved, and her life has become miserable by way of an atrocity by a
police officer, she is not in a position to undertake any orthodox
litigation and proceeding. Therefore, interim compensation can be
awarded under Article 226.
2.7. Suffice
it is to say that in the case of mass crimes like the Gujarat carnage,
or other such instances of selective and targeted crimes against
sections of the population, like the anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984, or the
anti-Dalit violence that takes place periodically, the discretionary
dole that the state announces as compensation is in no way commensurate
with the loss of life, dignity, livelihood and property of the victims.
2.8.
Similarly, abdicating its primary role as protector and provider of all
its citizenry, the Gujarat government has made no efforts to compute the
extent of the loss of lives, the quantum of the destruction of homes,
belongings, businesses and agricultural properties to date.
2.9. A
measly Rs. 2,500 is being given as dole to persons for loss of household
goods (ghar vakhari) and, though the Prime Minister had announced
that Rs. 50,000 would be given for loss of homes, less than 10 per cent
of those who have obtained home compensation from the Gujarat government
(at least 25 per cent of the total affected have not received anything
at all) have got more than Rs. 30,000 each. For most of the survivors of
the Gujarat carnage, the state government has rubbed salt on the wounds
already suffered, by giving them paltry amounts of Rs. 1,200-2,500 each
or less.
3. Rehabilitation
3.1. The
Gujarat government has shown a similar callous indifference to the
rehabilitation of the victims of continued violence. Barely a year ago,
when a devastating earthquake struck the same state, the Gujarat
government evolved an elaborate Earthquake-2001 Rehabilitation Package
No. 1 for the earthquake affected and similar Packages No. 2, 3, 4, 4a,
4b, 5 followed. The Tribunal has closely examined these packages. They
show an elaborate and responsible concern on the part of the state
government to categorise the damage to homes and compensate the loss on
the basis of this categorisation. These packages show that the state
government awarded damages from Rs. 7,000, for a hut that had fully
collapsed, to Rs. 8,000, 15,000, 30,000, 45,000 and Rs 1.5 lakh,
depending on the extent of damage. Besides, the packages show government
involvement in the repair and replacement of infrastructural facilities
like health, sanitation, roads, education, water supply and power. It
also talks of the restoration of community assets and economic
livelihood. It talks of restoration of cultural and heritage sites. The
packages include the suspension of property tax and other taxes for a
year and grants-in-aid to sustain the municipalities. It talks of a
detailed survey to be conducted by the state, using technical teams,
photographs and other data, to assess the damage. Only the bare details
of these seven-eight packages announced by the government of Gujarat,
run by the same party, just over a year before the carnage, have been
detailed here. The intent is to simply establish how deeply
discriminatory, callous and objectionable the conduct of the Gujarat
government is in the context of the carnage.
3.2. Not
only has no comprehensive rehabilitation package been declared even five
months after the violence, no survey has been conducted. And by its
behaviour and action, the government has made it clear that it wishes to
have nothing to do with the physical and psychological rehabilitation of
its own people, the Muslims of Gujarat. In fact, unofficial NGO surveys
and reports suggest mass migrations from Gujarat to Mumbai, Maharashtra,
Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, UP and Bihar. The number could be
a staggering 15,000.
3.3. Apart
from the loss of about 2,000 lives, the destruction of businesses is
worth at least Rs. 3,800 crore. The damage caused to private homes and
agricultural properties of at least 3,00,000 victims of Gujarat has not
been computed. Not less than 270 mosques, dargahs and other
shrines, representative of our composite culture, were systematically
destroyed in the first five days of the carnage. Instead of showing
shock and remorse at the fact that the religious places of worship and
the cultural heritage of the minority community were damaged and
destroyed, Shri Modi has made public pronouncements, stating that there
was no question of his government either buying land to re-house
survivors, for whom returning to a threatening environment is an
impossibility, or of repairing or rebuilding mosques, dargahs and
shrines that have been damaged.
3.4.
Reporting on a meeting of a 100-odd representatives from among the
Muslim community with the CM, The Times of India said, "CM
outrightly rejected the demand that riot-affected victims from the
worst-affected areas like Naroda Patia, Chamanpura, Sardarpura, Best
Bakery, Panvad and other carnages be provided with alternate
resettlement sites… He also refused any government fund to rebuild the
ransacked shrines. The CM’s tough talk came at a gathering organised by
the Gujarat Minorities Finance Development Corporation chairman, Shri
Gani Qureshi." (The Times of India, Saturday, June 8, 2002). It
becomes clear from this and other reported decisions that the Gujarat
government does not feel in the least obligated to rehabilitate the
victims on humanitarian, egalitarian, constitutional or on any other
grounds.
3.5. This
attitude of the chief minister and his government is in direct violation
of the recommendation of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC)
that has directed the government to rebuild all the shrines of
religious and cultural importance that have been destroyed. In fact,
according to a news report that appeared in The Pioneer on August
28, 2002 titled, ‘ASI ordered to repair Gujarat monuments’, it was
reported that the union minister for culture and tourism, Shri Jagmohan
had ordered the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to repair any
protected monuments damaged or destroyed in either the Gujarat
earthquake or the carnage. According to the ASI, some of the protected
monuments to be repaired include historic mosques like the Ishanpur
Masjid at Paldi, Ahmedabad and ‘makbaras’ (tombs) from the
Sultanate period, destroyed during the carnage, and the Lothal and
Dholavira sites of the Indus Valley civilisation that were damaged
during the earthquake. Evidence recorded before the tribunal shows that
many historic, religious and cultural sites were systematically targeted
in the violence. It is to be hoped that this decision of the central
tourism and culture ministry is implemented swiftly.
4. Situation of Muslims in Gujarat
4.1. The
Tribunal notes with concern and dismay, the continuing misery of the
victim Muslim community in Gujarat. In areas where the most brutal
incidents of mass killing, quartering and killings (often after sexual
crimes against women and girls were committed) took place, statewide
surveys by independent groups show that there is no question of the
victimised section of residents returning to their original place of
residence. (See Detailed Annexures: status of Refugees, Volume III).
These include survivors of Ghodasar, Sardarpura, Pandharwada, Ode,
Sanjeli, Randhikpur and Chanasma massacres, as also residents of
villages in Gandhinagar district itself, where Muslims were in a small
and hopeless minority. They also include areas like Gulberg society,
Ahmedabad. Though many residents of Naroda Gaon and Patiya have
returned, this has been under duress, after the forced closure of the
refugee camps where they had sought shelter. Many others have been
rehabilitated by Muslim NGOs in different parts of Ahmedabad, while a
significant number have migrated to other states.Agricultural land
holdings owned by Muslims in districts are being callously taken over by
miscreants and dominant interests.
4.2. In many
villages, especially in Mehsana, Gandhinagar, Panchmahal and Dahod
districts, Muslims who have returned to their battered homes were facing
a strictly enforced economic boycott by the dominant castes and
communities through their refusal to buy milk products from them, to
hire them as labour on their fields, etc. A near permanent loss of
livelihood, and therefore a reduction to penury, was an imminent and
serious likelihood. The urgent need for intervention by central and
state agencies is a must before this enforced destitution causes further
alienation and marginalisation of these populations.
4.3. In
welcome contrast to the above, in many regions of Sabarkantha and
Banaskantha districts, it appears that a sincere effort was being made
by members from the dominant community to isolate those in their midst
who have led and fomented trouble, and to take a stand against violence
in the future. In Chhotaudaipur, where sections of the Adivasi
population have been misled and misused by dominant sections of their
own and other castes, there has been a genuine expression of remorse,
too, about the incident.
4.4. That
only a fragile peace prevails in the state can be gauged from the fact
that, with the slightest hint of fresh aggression or trouble, vulnerable
sections of the Muslim population who have returned to their original or
new places of residence rush back to the security of those camps that
are still running. This happened, the Tribunal has noted, for a whole
week around the time of the July 12, 2002 rath yatra, which the
Gujarat government, in its irresponsible attitude to governance, refused
to postpone or re-route. The same thing happened again, on September 24,
when the attack on the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar took place.
Overnight, the refugee camp at Haj House had to provide for over 4,000
terrified persons, while the capacity of the camp is only 1,925.
Needless to say, on such occasions, not only has the Gujarat government
failed in providing a sense of security to large sections of its own
citizenry, it has not even provided the ration and costs to camp
managers who have borne the entire expenses.
4.5. It is
shocking and unfortunate that while the situation on the ground remains
grim in the state, where no remorse has been expressed, no justice is in
sight, where relief has only grudgingly been given and rehabilitation
measures have been meagre, the sole desire of the government appeared to
be to proclaim ‘normalcy’ before the country and the world. At no time
was this babble of normalcy exposed more effectively than during the
visit of the two teams of the Chief Election Commission to the state in
August 2002. The extensive visits of the teams to the towns and villages
of Gujarat, their assessment of the status of criminal investigations,
the pathetic plight of homes that even six months after the violence lie
in a state of total disrepair, are shocking pointers to the extent that
the government of Gujarat has gone, and continues to do so, to literally
delegitimise the rights and the very existence of a section of its
citizens — the Muslims of Gujarat.
4.6. The
story of Gujarat today, especially of cities like Ahmedabad, is one of
brutally enforced ghettoisation of the Muslim minority in their
residential colonies as much as in their business and trade enterprises.
This phenomenon has been growing steadily over the past two decades
(See chapter, Build-Up in Gujarat, Volume II) but the present
carnage has made it very acute. In parts of Ahmedabad, it is becoming
increasingly difficult for the Muslim minority to live, inhabit and move
freely in areas that are now seen as "Hindu". This state of affairs
should be unacceptable in any part of Constitution-bound India.
4.7. During
the violence, communal polarisation had taken place in public and
private hospitals, in schools and in many other public arenas. The
Tribunal finds that not only is this ugly reality in Gujarat shocking,
there is no effort at all on any significant scale, either by the state
or in civil society, to protest and rectify the situation through short
and long-term measures.
4.8. For the
religious minorities, the state of affairs in Gujarat is blatantly
discriminatory and in violation of the Indian Constitution. The Tribunal
regrets to record that with the connivance of the state, they have
already been reduced to the status of second-class citizens.
5. Violation of Basic Human Rights
5.1. The
crimes against humanity that took place in the state of Gujarat after
February 27, were all gross violations of basic human rights. The
survivors were rendered destitute. All the homes, schools, cultural and
religious places, that have been damaged or destroyed need to be
rebuilt.
5.2. All the
offences were offences under sections 302/307, 295 and 153 of the Indian
Penal Code.
5.3. Despite
the mass crimes committed against large sections of the population of
Gujarat, the police response to the crimes was such that justice was not
done. This is evident from the fact that mass FIRs were filed, often
even panchnamas were not recorded and an investigation of
forensic evidence was not undertaken.
Our examination of the voluminous
evidence, including the statistics gathered by different groups, clearly
reveals that in each case the system was not geared to cope.
5.4. In
Gujarat, even the appointment of public prosecutors followed neither
constitutional principles nor the basic principles of criminal justice.
5.5. Section 164 of the IPC
empowers the judge to inform himself/herself about the truth. This is a
section that can be, but has not been used in many cases, to get at the
truth.