This is the path–breaking ground of a public interest writ petition filed in early June 1998 against the state government in the Bombay High Court. The petition that has also made Justice B.N. Srikrishna himself the second respondent has urged that the Judge be directed by the court to furnish the report to the public immediately.

The grounds cited in the petition filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) against the state government and the Judge are the citizens’ fundamental right to know, the fact that lakhs of rupees of public money have gone into the investigation, that the hearings were in public and therefore confidentiality of the conclusions is untenable in law and, most critically, that, it is an inherent and basic rule of law that any decision to be taken by government must be free of bias.

The circumstances under which this commission of inquiry was appointed by the then state government in January 1993, the petition states, "was the opinion of many reputed and independent persons that the Shiv Sena party had actively fomented the riots and that the police had either deliberately taken no steps to suppress the riots or had supported the rioters, therefore, no objective decision on when or whether the report should be published can ever be taken either by the Shiv Sena party presently constituting the majority party in government."

The petition further alleges that the same circumstances make it "obvious that the government would not take all necessary steps to protect the public." Therefore, the petition states, it is necessary that the Bombay High court intervene and grant the reliefs claimed in the petition as the first respondents, that is, the state government, can never take any fair or unbiased decision in the matter.

For over three months now, human rights organisations and even opposition political parties have been demanding the immediate release of the Srikrishna Commission’s findings on the Mumbai riots of December 1992–January 1993 and the bomb blasts of March 1993. On April 17, 1998, Communalism Combat had organised a public meeting of citizens to demand that the report be made public.

Since February 16, 1998 when the Judge submitted the report to the government, the posturing of the ruling SS–BJP government — especially the statement of chief minister Manohar Joshi: " Everything that our party undertakes is done after due thought and, therefore, I have no regrets of my party’s role during the riots" — have heightened the apprehension that the government is blatantly avoiding the tabling of the report before the state assembly and making it public (see Communalism Combat, May 1998).

Since then, two direct citizens’ actions addressed directly to Justice Srikrishna and the Bombay High Court have urged that the judiciary intervene to protect the citizen’s right to know and in the interests of fair play and unbiased conduct by the executive.

The first was a public requisition made by senior citizens of Mumbai to Justice Srikrishna urging him to complete the mammoth task undertaken by him and release the report. This requisition was signed by Justice Hosbet Suresh (retired), eminent Gandhian, Ushaben Mehta, CMD, Air Freight, Cyrus Guzder, Marathi playwright, Vijay Tendulkar, CMD, MARG, Titoo Ahluwalia, CMD, Bharat Bijlee, Nakul Mehta, theatre personality, Alyque Padamsee, film star, activist and Rajya Sabha MP, Shabana Azmi, film writer, Javed Akhtar and representatives of grass–root level organisations.

The second is the public interest writ petition filed by the PUCL that is scheduled to come up for hearing in the third week of June. In law, the six months period after which the government is bound to release the report ends on August 15.