Home Page
Communalism Combat
India Rights & Wrongs
Khoj
Aman
Feedback
Action Alerts
Campaigns
Resources
for
Secularism
About us
Contact Us
Sabrang Team
|
Press Release
People’s Union for Civil
Liberties, Baroda and Vadodara Shanti Abhiyan
13 Pratap Kunj Society, Karelibaug,
Vadodara 390 018
Phone: 2464210, 2462328 Fax No: 2340223
Email: [email protected],
[email protected]
[email protected]
June 17, 2003
First State Sponsored
Violence and now State Sponsored Muslim Depositions
The unusual and bizarre happenings
surrounding the Nanavati-Shah Commission hearings into the violence
in Gujarat of last year just refuse to vanish.
First the unusual statement from Justice Nanavati himself giving a
clean chit to the Police and the Government before even starting
hearings in Vadodara and Ahmedabad. Then there was the mass boycott
of the hearings on June 16, 2003, the first day of the 3-day
hearings in Vadodara, by a majority of Muslim organisations and also
by the PUCLVadodara Shanti Abhiyan. Then last night (night of June
16) worried that the hearings will fizzle out even more, the
Government lawyers and the Police got into the act. The Police went
knocking and telephoning Muslim victims many past midnight, some
today morning and some yesterday evening asking Muslim victims,
mostly poor, to depose. Many were told in plain language that the
witnesses should highlight before the Commission what a good job the
Police did last year in protecting the Muslims. Some, who did not
understand oral communication, had the benefit of written fiats
couched as “requests”. Many were summoned for a “meeting” in the
Narmada Bhavan premises in the morning before being told to march on
to the Circuit House where the Commission hearings are being held.
What will you do if you are Muslim and poor and the Police, on whose
mercy the plying of your thela or lari depend, wants
your presence somewhere? No prizes for guessing.
The PUCL and Vadodara Shanti Abhiyan (PUCL-VSA) who were among the
prominent boycotters yesterday - with Prof. J. S. Bandukwalla even
standing in protest with a placard “Go Back Nanavati” later met the
new Police Commissioner, Mr. Sudhir Sinha, to understand the reason
behind the Police visits to Muslim victims’ homes. The Commissioner
denied any knowledge of such activities by his department staff. He
even claimed it was not happening. In any case PUCL-VSA members
should be worried only if their witnesses were being tampered or
threatened, he said.
Many of the Police and its staff were accused and named in several
reports by human rights organizations as well as the NHRC. In fact
the indifference and active abettment of the Police during the
violence is a well-documented fact. Now, what would you call
repeated requests by your neighborhood police inspector or constable
telling you to depose and give positive certificate of the Police’s
good conduct during the communal violence of last year? Friendly
persuasion or tampering of the evidence by the accused? This when
the Commission nor the local administration did not see it fit to
give advertisements in prominent local newspapers of it intent to
hold inquiry in Vadodara on specified dates nor gave notice to
appear to any of the petitioners who had earlier field affidavits
before it.
It is indeed a strange irony that in the name of openness witnesses
are asked to depose in a room consisting of 50 persons consisting
mostly of senior bureaucrats (like the Collector) and police
officers (like the DSP and former Police Commissioner Tuteja) and
their minions with for a good measure journalists and lobbyists
walking in and out of the room? Any way of conducting a serious
inquiry into a horrible carnage? Amateurish at best. Even by the
standards of going through the motions before a formal whitewash.
Kiritbhai
Bhatt Chinu Srinivasan Rohit Prajapati
Trupti Shah Isaacbhai Chinwalla Deeptha
Achar
Johannes Manjrekar Maya Valecha Mansoor
Saleri
People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Baroda
and Vadodara Shanti Abhiyan
____________________________________________________________________________________
Rohit Prajapati / Trupti Shah
37, Patrakar Colony, Tandalja Road,
Post-Akota, Vadodara - 390 020
GUJARAT, INDIA
Phone No. PARYAVARAN SURAKSHA SAMITI (O) + 91-265 - 2412499 / (R)
2334461
Email No: (1) [email protected] (2) [email protected]
____________________________________________________________________________________
TOP
|