Justice delayed, not denied

After 59 karsewaks were charred to death in coach S-6 of Sabarmati Express near the Godhra railway station on February 27, 2002 leading to horrific riots in Gujarat, the fruits of justice have taken some time coming.

More than nine years later, riot-affected victims finally got relief under the direct supervision of the Supreme Court. A designate special court judge S.C. Shrivastav last week convicted 31 people to life imprisonment in the sensational Sardarpura massacre in Gujarat's Mehsana district in March 2002.

The Mehsana special court awarded life imprisonment to 31 culprits while 42 of the 73 accused were acquitted due to lack of evidences. The Sardarpura massacre took place on the night of March 1, 2002, hours after Godhra.

The tragedy triggered an unprecedented wave of anti-Muslim violence in which more than 2,000 lost their lives, though accounts vary. “With the conviction of 31 persons in the massacre of 33 people in Sardarpura during the Gujarat carnage of 2002, the wheels of truth and justice are surely, though slowly, moving in the right direction. Whilst there were more than 70 accused, the conviction of such a large number in a single case of communal violence in the country is unprecedented,” says Father Cedric Prakash, director of A Centre for Human Rights, Justice and Peace.

Sardarpura is a tiny village comprising 10 per cent Muslims with a total of 1,500 residents.

The prosecution was able to establish that on the night of March 1, 2002, the then sarpanch of Sardarpura village Kanu Patel and a local BJP leader Ambalal Patel incited mob of more then 500 people to “teach Muslims a lesson.” They set a 16x11 room in which Muslims had take refuge on fire killing 33, including 17 women and 11 children.

After an avalanche of human right criticism and judicial activism, the Gujarat riot cases are making some headway. This is the second major verdict in which the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) has taken the probe away from the Gujarat Police.

In March 2008, the apex court after numerous complaints from riot victims and human right activists, had ordered a Special Investigation Team (SIT) be set up to probe nine cases (see box), including Godhra. In May 2009, after further complaints, it ordered a stay on all probes.

After the apex court indictment, SIT started speeding its investigations. First, the special court of Ahmedabad pronounced its verdict in the Sabarmati train carnage or the Godhra case and sentenced 11 to death penalty and handed life sentences to 20 others. The court acquitted 63 others, including the main accused Maulvi Umarji.

Since then, it has been the Sardarpura verdict. With these two judgements, the first major breakthroughs have taken place in one of the worst communal riots since 1947 which the state's chief minister Narendra Modi has been often accused of abetting. Father Cedric, a key human rights campaigner following the course of the riots in the last decade  says,``Other cases now need to be expedited and the guilty, irrelevant of the office they hold, should be convicted as soon as possible. Only then will the victim-survivors of one of the bloodiest chapters of India’s history take consolation from the fact that their struggle has not been in vain.”

The nine-year post-riot scene in Gujarat has been a story of victim intimidation and threat where every trick in the book has been used to change original testimonies.

Human right activists have campaigned vigorously against the Gujarat government for having failed to provide security to witnesses leading to a general feeling that justice was denied in other cases, including the Best Bakery case of Vadodara where more than 14 people were burnt alive.

Despite FIRs against some leading BJP members, the local police appeared disinterested and the common refrain was that  Gujarat riots were going the way of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots,. 

The apex court in turn appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) under the leadership of former CBI director R Raghavan and handed over nine `very sensitive' riot cases for fresh investigations.

In the Bilkis Banu and Best Bakery cases, victims finally got justice but it inspired other victims to come forward. After SIT took charge of the Naroda Patiya case, state minister Mayaben Kodnani (women and child development, higher education) was forced to resign from the Narendra Modi government.

After the Sardarpura judgment, there is a fresh ray of hope. Says Salim, a survivor of the Naroda Patiya massacre, “Though sentences awarded to the accused in Sardarpura case are not enough, I have hopes that I and other victims will get justice because of the Supreme Court.”

The Sardarpura sentiment is catching on . Says Zakia Jafri, widow of slain former Congress MP Ehsaan Jafri, “I believe that in all riot cases in Gujarat, the criminal ignorance of Gujarat Police is responsible. If they had carried out their task responsibly, then justice would have arrived much earlier. I welcome the judgment in the Sardarpura case and pray that culprits of Gulbarg Society case also get harsh punishments.''

On March 28, at the height of riots, 69 persons were killed in the Gulbarg Society in Ahmedabad. The victims included  Jafri. Despite the intervention of courts, intimidation continues.

Two witnesses of the Ode riot case being probed by the SIT, Idrish and Firoz Vohra have filed a complaint with the SIT that they are being threatened.
On November 5 this year, a critical witness of Naroda Patiya killings and noted RTI activist Nadeem Saiyed was brutally murdered in Muslim- dominated Juhapura area of Ahmedabad. The killers still remain at large.

Saiyed had deposed as a witness in Naroda Patiya case and was provided round-the-clock police protection, but at the time of his murder, his guards haddisappeared mysteriously. It is yet another warning that despite judicial intervention at the highest level, key witnesses to the Gujarat riots continue to remain vulnerable.