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No bail for Godhra accused
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OPENING
COMMENTS
Godhra –Discriminatory Justice
Acknowledgement, remorse,
justice and reconciliation are the accepted steps required for
collective healing when wounds of an indescribable nature have been
inflicted on a whole population. In Gujarat, five years after
independent India’s worst genocide, there has been little or no
acknowledgement of the crimes and no question therefore of any
expression of remorse from perpetrators and masterminds. Justice, except
in a few isolated cases, dodges Gujarat’s survivors. It must therefore
be a while before we talk of reconciliation.
Similar or worse questions
arise from Gujarat today. An analyses in detail of the evidence placed
before the Nanavati-Shah Commission. Thousands of victim survivors
braved threats and intimidation from a vindictive administration to
place their affidavits on record. (In August 2004, victim survivors and
members of citizens’ groups were assaulted and threatened by riot
accused, Babu Bajrangi, in the premises of the circuit house where the
commission sits.) The rare courage of two police officers has exposed
the cynical nitty-gritty that shaped the orchestration of the genocide.
The tenacity of groups in deconstructing the Godhra fire before the
commission pokes serious holes in the barefaced lies behind the Godhra
train burning. Today, more than ever, it appears that the incident was
an accident and not an ‘ISI-inspired conspiracy’ as touted by former
union home minister LK Advani and Gujarat’s chief minister, Narendra
Modi.
Now, even as the Godhra
fire can no longer be used to justify the post-Godhra massacres, 84
accused languish in Ahmedabad’s Sabarmati jail. Meanwhile, escaping the
long arm of the law, perpetrators of the genocide, many with powerful
political connections, roam free. Details of the illegal continued
custody of those accused in the Godhra arson have been placed before our
apex court for three years now. However, despite sincere efforts by
legal action groups and counsel, these men have been denied bail.
The fact that 84 accused
still remain in Gujarat’s jails five years after the incident, the fact
that many of them are ill, one is blind; the fact that their families
have been reduced to penury and indignity while the main accused and
masterminds of the post-Godhra carnages not only roam free but rule
Gujarat by action and word, raises the niggling, troublesome question
once again. Discriminatory justice. Can a discriminatory system of
justice be viable in principle, given what our Constitution espouses?
What does this reality mean in practical terms, given that today we also
face the challenge of another kind of terror, internationally supported
bomb terror? In the ultimate analysis, genuine secularism and
constitutional governance must mean that issues of mass violence,
accountability, transparency, impunity for mass murderers and government
officials, are not merely the stuff of election campaigns but the basis
on which the balance sheets of our public servants and representatives
are drawn. Only then would we have made the transition from a purely
electoral democracy to true constitutional democracy.
Teesta Setalvad
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