"They chopped off my brother’s hand, then his feet; and slit his throat, all in my mother’s presence. She was not spared either, her fingers were cut off, and she sat the whole day next to my brother’s corpse. No one from the neighbourhood came to our help, no one stopped the blood and gore; even the police van doing its rounds did not stop. When my younger brother, hiding inside, saw my mother chasing the van, he rushed out. They pounced on him and burnt him alive."

That was Raeesabano, who lost her mother and three brothers to the man–slaughter that prevailed in Bombay’s neighbourhoods, speaking tonelessly before breaking down in front of an audience that was, itself, moved to tears.

Then spoke Leena Shinde, who’s husband disappeared, never to return, as she held her 14–day–old newborn in her arms, that fateful day in January 1993. She has scoured every hospital and every jail in the city and state since; approached politicians who all made false promises but has still not received her due in compensation for a life lost.

Hajrabi is another survivor, who was witness to the brutal slaughter of her husband and 18–year– old son (her two other offspring were fortunately saved as they were spending the weekend with their married sister); she even braved threats and testified before Justice Srikrishna; her sister is also a survivor who also lost her husband in a similar fashion but who has received the compensation amount. Till date, over seven years‘ down the line, compensation, leave alone the sense of justice of having the murderers punished, elude Hajrabi.

It was a protest with a difference that took place on September 24, 2000. A Public Hearing of the Survivors of the Bombay Riots of 1992–1993, organised by Communalism Combat. It brought the metro’s conscience–driven citizens to the front seats of the auditorium to witness the public testimonies, to re–live the horrors of that time through the testimonies of the survivors who live them every day.

What the public hearing managed to highlight — with survivor after survivor recounting searing tales of violent deaths that had unalterably changed their lives — was that nearly eight years later, many had not even received the bare compensation for the unfair loss. That there are upto 2,000 children in the metro who receive no assistance for their schooling fees. That 249 did receive a monthly tuition fee amount from the National Foundation of Communal Harmony (attached to the Union home ministry), but the support has mysteriously stopped since July 1999.

Compounding all this is a grudging and reluctant political leadership that refuses to accept responsibility for the breakdown in governance by unequivocally punishing the guilty men in khadi, khakhi and mufti.

However, the intensity of the Public Testimonies, before a hall packed to its seams, with an audience that lent empathy and solidarity to the survivors, succeeded in shaking an inept and callous administration and a slumbering public conscience, somewhat.

Senior citizen and communications analyst, Alyque Padamsee set the tone for the morning with his reading from an excerpt of a New York Times editorial on the Eichmann Trial. "Each person who reads the testimony brings the dead back to life and gives them faces… There was a boy in the crowd of Jews being flogged to the grave. He turns around in the mind of some living person and suddenly he has a face and is remembered…This will be the real verdict of the Eichmann trial and it will not be given by the judges in Jerusalem, but by each person who has read of the suffering and humiliation of the dead and heard their cries and seen their faces."

The sutradhar for the day was noted poet and lyricist, Javed Akhtar, who’s carefully nuanced words took the audience through the audio–visual imagery of the time before we heard the survivors. Thereafter, Nikhil Wagle — the firebrand crusader for human rights in the face of violent attacks on him and his paper, Apla Mahanagar by the Shiv Sena —, and Justice Hosbet Suresh one of the authors of People’s Verdict, the first investigation into the violence of the time — spoke.

In the audience, the survivors and their families, concerned and angry citizens, from bastis and mohallas that surrendered to the venom and violence, sat cheek by jowl with sections of the city’s first citizens and intelligentsia on that Sunday morning, sharing the trauma of injustice, re–living the horror. As survivor after survivor recounted searing tales of violent death we realised that those days had not merely unalterably changed their lives. The impact of the horror and violence would not, could not, go away as a callous administration made a mockery of the persistent demands of both compensation for lives lost and justice and punishment of the guilty.

Ordinary Indian criminal law enjoins the authorities to legally accept a person as ‘missing’ if there is no traceable evidence of him for seven years. Yet the widow plods on, yet the orphans are left to the mercy of a collectorate that just does not wish to release the compensation amount.

A positive outcome of the day’s events was the establishment of a Citizens Watchdog Committee consisting of members of all groups who have fought for justice and relief and rehabilitation. The CWC is scheduled to take all the cases of non–paid compensation to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in the second week of October. A fund for the education of orphans of the riots and the bomb blasts has also been set up by this Committee. The legal aid cell attached to the CWC will also fight some of the justice–related issues.

It may be recalled that the present government had, in a recent affidavit before the Supreme Court, revealed its lackadaisical attitude to the question of compensation and justice (see CC, Sept 2000). The success of this Public Hearing was proven in that it elicited a facile assurance from Maharashtra chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh and deputy chief minister, Chhagan Bhujbal, barely two days after reiterating their commitment to implement the Srikrishna report.