Hope of justice for Gujarat riot victims
By A K B Krishnan
THE Supreme Court’s order last week on the establishment of a Special Investigating Team (SIT) to probe Gujarat riot cases is a step in the right direction and meets the National Human Rights Commission’s plea half way. The order comes six years after the state was torn apart by communal riots under the Modi government. The accused remain unpunished and the survivors of the most unthinkable crimes grapple with their ruined lives after open subversion of justice within the state that again came under Modi’s rule.
Unlike in the Best Bakery and Bilkis Bano cases, the apex court did not direct the cases to be shifted out of Gujarat. But the court’s directive to include two investigators from outside the state in the SIT is a stinging reminder that it doesn’t trust the Gujarat police to do a fair investigation on its own.
There is sufficient reason for the court’s scepticism. A probe by the CBI in the Bilkis Bano case revealed that local policemen did the bidding of the perpetrators of the crimes. The Gujarat police could not do much since to redeem themselves. The state’s lower judiciary and administrators too have so far failed in proving themselves unequal to the task of settling these cases fairly. In case after case, evidence was tampered with, trails destroyed, and witnesses made to retract their statements.
All efforts to transfer the cases outside the state were opposed by the government which chose to take the issue as an affront to Gujarati honour to have external judgment passed on it. Many cases like that of Naroda Patiya and Ehsan Jaffri where the former MP was killed in full view of his locality fell by the wayside after concerted attempts made by the local police to destroy evidence and turn away witnesses. Many accused were also able to get away by using spurious alibis or by intimidating witnesses.
It was precisely because of the Gujarat administration’s wilful obstruction of justice that the Supreme Court earlier ordered the reopening of hundreds of riot cases that had ended in tame acquittals. In the Best Bakery and Bilkis Bano rape cases, the apex court went further and placed the Central Bureau of Investigation in charge of the investigations. The trials in these two cases were held in Maharashtra and ended in convictions.
By transferring these cases, the Supreme Court made a scathing statement on the rule of law under the Modi government, but gave up simply on the state and its institutions by not holding them accountable for the orchestration of communal violence and its aftermath. In 2003, the court stayed proceedings in several high-profile massacre cases, pending final disposal of the National Human Rights Commission’s plea seeking transfer of these trials also out of Gujarat.
The order of the court now meets the NHRC’s plea only half-way: the trials will now be held in Gujarat but the SIT will be empowered to conduct further investigations and file supplementary charge-sheets if it finds the Gujarat police’s original investigations to be incomplete or inadequate. And the Supreme Court is taking no chances of any subversion of justice this time. It has instituted a bench to monitor the new investigation, headed by a retired officer from outside the state, and fixed strict schedules for both the formation of the team and its report. It has also done away with a great deal of bureaucracy in allowing witnesses to submit evidence in writing, thereby further eliminating fears of intimidation and harassment by the local police or politicians.
The credentials of the team are reassuring — one of the Gujarat officers, Geeta Johri, was responsible for the revelations about the Sohrabuddin fake encounter case. She has fearlessly spoken out against officers in her own force for cover-ups. The team clearly could instill confidence in the victims and witnesses. And if they can conduct their inquiry without being swayed or pressured by a hostile ground situation in Gujarat, the state’s institutions have also a chance to finally do their duty.
The prosecutor is an equally important part of the process. In several Gujarat riot cases, the public prosecutors did not seem particularly interested in winning convictions. Some of these prosecutors had direct link with the RSS or the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, while others chose not to inconvenience or embarrass the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. In the Odh massacre case, where the perpetrators buried their victims’ bodies at different locations, the public prosecutor actually opposed the plea by the victims’ families for the bodies to be exhumed.
If the SIT is to make headway in all these cases, it will require the court’s strong backing in dealing with other branches of the justice delivery system. Continuous monitoring of these cases by the Supreme Court is needed to ensure final delivery of justice. In the Godhra case, where more than 100 people have been languishing in jail for five years on terrorism charges which the POTA Review Committee found to be unwarranted, the SIT’s mandate must include impartially assessing the nature of the evidence against the accused and reviewing the official charge-sheet, with its multiple contradictions.
Six years after Godhra and its horrific aftermath, thousands of people are yet to emerge from the ruins of their lives. The wounds will take a long time to heal. But the important thing is that a judicial system has ground into motion to give voice to the voiceless. If the team is able to conclude its work satisfactorily, much confidence will be restored not only in the Gujarat administration, but also in criminal justice system and Indian democracy as a whole. It will also provide some succour to the victims.
But the strongest message that this reinvestigation conveys is that the guilty and their benefactors cannot get away and take it for granted that they will not be brought to book.
Clean up Goa
FOUR decades after catapulting to the world’s tourism map for its palm-fringed beaches, whitewashed churches, brown-tiled, low-slung homes, clean villages and easy availability of drugs, Goa is now getting all the attention for all the wrong reasons. British teenager Scarlett Keeling, flower-child of a flower-parent, was found dead recently, reportedly after an extended trip of substance abuse and rape at Anjuna beach of Goa.
And the world has now come to Goa to inspect this tiny, pretty state’s seedy, seething underbelly. While such crime could have happened anywhere, it is unfortunate that it occurred in Goa, better known as one of the more women-friendly states in India.
Goa with a population larger than that of Chandigarh reported far less number of crimes against women than the Union territory had three years in a row. The place is no less safe from many other places in the world frequented by hippies and freaks.
The widely publicised incidents like the one involving the British teenager certainly do take the sheen off campaigns like ‘Incredible India’. But, obviously the murder or the rising notoriety of beaches like Anjuna, is not expected to represent an alarming trend to affect the annual level of tourist inflows to Goa, thanks to its cheap and cheerful charms.
And Goa would not have much to worry even if the foreigners shy away as Indian tourists, eager to explore the ‘idea’ of being in a ‘free’ state, free from the restrictions of middle-class attitudes, regularly outnumber and outspend their foreign counterparts. Only a fifth of the tourists who visit the state each year are foreigners, most of them looking for a cheap holiday.
With its rich cultural and religious traditions, Goa offers a heady mix of the old and the new. However, over the years, it has also become an attractive hang-out for socially dysfunctional people.
Easy availability of drugs and its reputation as a tourist paradise seem to have perpetuated its image as a permissive haven, away from the rough and tumble of the outside world.
The idyll is shattered when something goes horribly wrong as it did with 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling, on holiday with her family from Britain.
Credible sources in the police, administration, media and even the all-knowing tourist trade have often been portraying Goa today as a party zone drawn into specific lines of control by vested interests, foreign as well as native. There are beaches to the north and south where Goans, let alone other Indians, are reportedly unwelcome.
Certainly, the Scarlett case has raised key questions about law and order in Goa, and also the drug-dealing and crime going unchecked on its beaches. But to vaguely blame “seedy hippies” for fostering lawless zone on beaches is to evade more pressing questions about Goa’s own policing failures.
The safety of tourists who visit India is vital. The growth and spread of a drug mafia that might well include members of the police force, locals and some foreigners, is cause for action. Our law and order situation is abysmal and Scarlett’s may not be the last such case. Goa needs an anti-drug crusade that grows out of community concern, supported by NGOs and government agencies. The people of the region should come together to clean up their home.