The Crooked Staff

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has taken up the Best Bakery case and has asked the Gujarat government to go in appeal against the verdict. Says NHRC chairman Justice A.S. Anand, "Nobody can deny that 14 persons were burnt alive and property worth lakhs was looted and destroyed. These are simple facts that can be investigated any time and followed by a fresh trial." The NHRC has sent a three-member team to collect the facts of the case.

But the Best Bakery case is only one among many, which have either been closed or are likely to be abandoned. Members of the minority community now fear that many cases filed against the rioters could go the Best way. The following are some cases where justice has been denied:

• The Randhikpur rape and murder case: Nineteen-year-old Bilkis from Randhikpur village in central Gujarat’s Dahod district was witness to 18 murders. When her village was attacked on March 1, 2002, by a mob, all the resident 75 Muslim families fled for their lives. Bilkis and 18 others in her group walked for three days before they were spotted by a truckload of people. "We thought help was at hand. But we were mistaken," she recalls.

Tired of repeating her story, Bilkis recounts how her two-year-old baby was snatched away from her and beheaded, how her mother, sisters, aunts and cousins were raped and then killed.

She was spotted by a police squad, which took her to the Limkheda police station, registered her complaint and sent her to a relief camp. She thought her complaint had been dutifully recorded. But she was wrong.

The FIR did not mention her being raped. Nor did it record the names of those whom she had identified as the rapists and killers. All it spoke about was a faceless mob. The police just took her thumb-impression on a paper and ‘recorded’ her statement. After intervention by human rights activists, an additional statement was recorded. A fortnight after she was sexually assaulted, a medical examination was carried out—it failed to confirm the rape.

Today, the case stands closed. In the police records, Bilkis’ eyewitness account is categorised as "true, but undetected". Her mental condition has been dubbed as "unstable". While it needed a menacing Madhu Srivastava, the powerful bjp mla from Vadodara, to turn the Best Bakery witnesses hostile, in the Randhikpur case, a docile, weak and illiterate Bilkis— the witness and victim—was helpless with the police cleverly dismissing her as mentally unstable.

• The Delol Village Case: Meet Yakubbhai of Delol village in Panchmahals. He breaks down as he narrates his gruesome tale. Even as he hid in the fields, he saw his parents, brother, sister, niece and nephew being mercilessly torched. "The mob, sporting saffron scarves and headbands, attacked with swords, sticks and cans of petrol," recounts Yakubbhai.

So the situation now is that there is no FIR registered till today in the case. What exists is a "collective" FIR clubbing different incidents in Delol village.

• Naroda Patiya and Gulberg Society cases: Since there was so much media spotlight on these incidents that the FIRs not only speak of huge mobs but identify leaders of those bands in the chargesheets. The chargesheet of the Gulberg Society, however, provides justification for the attack. It says the mob was provoked when former Congress MP, the septuagenarian Ehsan Jaffri, fired at it. The rioters killed 39 persons, including Jaffri.

Both chargesheets talk of "mobs infuriated by the killing of 57 Hindu kar sevaks and crying for revenge; shouting "Jai Sri Ram" and "Miyaone maro-kapo (Kill and cut Muslims)". In the Naroda Patiya case, 54 rioters were arrested and 51 of them are out on bail. As for the Gulberg Society case, 21 of the 28 arrested have been granted bail.

In all, 7,194 Hindus and 3,167 Muslims were arrested for their involvement in the Godhra incident and the post-Godhra carnage. As many as 631 people died in the rioting. Of them, 576 were Muslims and 95 Hindus. The largest number of arrests have been effected in the Godhra train case. All the 126 arrested are in custody and booked under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (pota), while not a single person has been charged under the same in the post-Godhra cases conveniently described as "revenge killings".

As many as 14 of the Naroda Patiya accused are absconding, while the number of absconders in case of Gulberg Society is 23. Absconding, that is, for the police. Not for the witnesses and victims, who see them roaming about freely and threatening them.

It seems clear that if those found guilty in the riots are to be brought to justice then the investigations and the filing of charges by the Gujarat police has to be closely monitored. One way of ensuring that justice is not denied is for the CBI to re-investigate the cases. But the Gujarat government is not keen to do that. The fate of the Best Bakery case will be the crucial test. Should the NHRC succeed in getting it re-opened, then the families of the riot victims can perhaps discern a glimmer of hope.