Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - Live
It’s too little, too late, my lords, say victims
What does a 30-yearlong wait for justice look like for the ’92’93 riot victims
MUMBAI: “It’s not just the rioters who are to blame. More than them, it’s the government that has deprived us of justice and now, so has the Supreme Court (SC),” said Shakeel Ahmed.
Ahmed was a young man of 31 when he approached the SC in 2001, urging that action be taken against the 31 policemen indicted by Justice B N Srikrishna in his Inquiry Report into the 1992-’93 Mumbai riots, postthe Babri Masjid demolition. In his report that was tabled in 1998, Justice Srikrishna had recommended strict action against these 31 for their misconduct during the riots, ranging from excessive and unnecessary firing resulting in the deaths of innocents, to shielding rioters, to extreme communal conduct.
The order in Ahmed’s petition came on Friday. It was too late now, said the three-judge SC Bench, to do anything about the way the 31 policemen had been allowed to get away. Legal action had been taken against only nine of those 31, but even they had walked free, either having been discharged without having to face a trial or acquitted after a trial. As for the rest: one was dismissed (even before the Srikrishna Report was filed), one compulsorily retired, 11were let off with minor disciplinary punishments and eight exonerated. One died.
When he filed the petition, Ahmed was an angry young activist, heading the Nirbhay Bano Andolan. The Andolan, with the help of a wide array of citizens, carried out a campaign for implementation of the Srikrishna Report, holding demonstrations, putting up posters demanding that the policemen be punished and bringing out booklets. At 52, Ahmed remains an activist. He was at the Bharat Jodo Yatra when I called him. And he has lost none of his anger. “We got nothing after all these years,’’ he said. “All our prayers have been rejected. And on what grounds? That it’s too late to do anything about the policemen?’’
Raising his voice, he added, “We approached the court in time, we weren’t late. We waited for the state government to act, and seeing that it wasn’t willing, we filed the petition. It’s the SC that let the matter remain pending for so long.”
Ahmed was equally angry about the lack of directions regarding the 1358 riot cases, closed by the police after being classified as ‘A summary’, which translates to ‘True but Undetected’. The Commission had found that in many of these cases, the victims had given the details of the offenders, sometimes even their names. Yet, the police had closed them. In some areas, most of the cases closed as ‘A Summary’ were those where Shiv Sainiks had been named as rioters.
“The court could have ordered an examination of why so many cases were closed,” said Ahmed, who is also a lawyer. “There is no outer limit for criminal prosecution. But the court didn’t even pass any strictures against the police! Such a big crime took place in those two months, 900 persons were killed, yet, the court says nothing can be done.’’
Like Shakeel, Farooq Mapkar too was angry. The bank peon dismissed the SC order that compensation be paid to the families of those who went missing during the riots as “an attempt to throw dust into the eyes’’ of the victims. “Thirty years later they are going to find these families?” he scoffed. “It was never about money anyway,’’ he added. “It was about justice. Had they ordered that the police be punished – now that would have been something.’’
Mapkar was shot in the shoulder as he knelt for namaz in the
Hari Masjid, in Sewree, in January 1993. That firing on namazis left six unarmed Muslims dead. Tired of waiting for the Maharashtra government to act against then sub-inspector Nikhil Kapse, who had been indicted by Justice Srikrishna, Mapkar approached the Bombay high court (HC) which ordered a reluctant state government to hand over the investigation to an even more reluctant Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
In 2010, the CBI exonerated Kapse. Its closure report showed that it had chosen to disbelieve the victims and eyewitnesses who testified against
Kapse, only because they had been arrested by him and charged with serious offences after the firing. All of them were acquitted in 2008. Mapkar, whose case of rioting had been separated from the rest (Shakeel Ahmed was his lawyer), was acquitted in 2009.
Mapkar’s appeal against the CBI’s closure report was rejected by the lower court; it is now pending in HC. The 56-year-old remains the only riot victim still fighting. “Had even a few policemen been punished, it would have sent a strong message,’’ said Mapkar bitterly. “We lost faith in the government long ago, later in the CBI too.” For the riot affected, the court’s order 30 years later is a bitter pill to swallow.
Abdullah Qasim was a child when he was orphaned by the January 1993 raid on the Imdadia madarsa, adjoining the Suleman Usman Bakery, on Mohammed Ali Road. His
JUSTICE B N SRIKRISHNA, WHO LED THE COMMISSION INQUIRING INTO THE RIOTS father, a teacher at the madarsa, was one of eight unarmed Muslims killed during the raid led by then Joint Police Commissioner Ram Dev Tyagi. Tyagi and his lieutenant were indicted by Justice Srikrishna. Charged with murder in 2001, both were discharged in 2003.
Reacting to the SC order, Qasim, now a school teacher, wondered why the court had ordered that the families of the missing be traced after so many years, while “ignoring the plight of those of us who are right here, waiting for justice. They are making fools of us. This order gives us nothing.”
Qasim had received the ₹2 lakh compensation for his father’s death, but as he said, “How far does that go? Enough to rebuild your life?”
The frustration expressed in these voices would be echoed by many who’ve had to deal with our legal system. But what makes these victims particularly bitter is the knowledge that in their case, it’s not just that the law has taken its course, but that it has been made to take a certain course. At every stage, the victims of the ’92-’93 riots and those fighting for them have found themselves against a wall put up by successive governments in Maharashtra. If the
Shiv Sena government wound up the Srikrishna Commission on Bal Thackeray’s birthday in 1995 and then rejected his report in 1998, the CongressNCP government protected the 31 indicted policemen, even rushing to the SC in 2009 to get a stay against the CBI inquiry ordered by the HC against subinspector Nikhil Kapse.
For all the disappointment with the courts, if anyone has helped the victims, it has been the judiciary. It was only after then CJI A S Anand named Ram Dev Tyagi and asked what action was being taken against him, that a reluctant CongressNCP government set up a Special Task Force (STF) in 2000 to act on the Commission’s Report. The STF charged Tyagi and 17 policemen who had accompanied him in the Suleman Usman Bakery raid, with murder. When Tyagi and eight of his co-accused were discharged (the Special Public Prosecutor handling the case was not even informed of the hearing), the government refused to appeal against it. “What more do you want? The law has taken its course,’’ a Congress MLA had then told me.
Even as it charged these cops with murder, the government refused to withdraw the case
filed against the bakery and madarsa inmates immediately after the raid. Again, the victims had to approach the HC, which remarked that in this case, “the protector became the predator.’’
It was the HC that described Mapkar’s case as one that “affects the very soul of India’’ when ordering the CBI to investigate it. Refusing to reverse this decision, the SC described the case as “extraordinary’’.
But how long can victims fight? The trial against the remaining seven policemen accused of murder in the Suleman Usman Bakery raid has been stumbling on without a Special Public Prosecutor. The list of witnesses for the prosecution includes many of those who survived that raid, bakery workers, madarsa students… all of them poor. While some are untraceable, never having returned to the city after their traumatic experience with the police during the raid, a few are in Mumbai. But those who know them refuse to persuade them to come to court to testify. “I’ll be called a police dalal if I were to approach them with this request,’’ said one such acquaintance. “Nothing will come out of it; why should they get involved, they’ve gone through enough,’’ said another.