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.