Crime and no punishment

With great power comes great impunity

“Conspiracy is established as all those who gathered were Hindus with intention to kill Muslims and damage their property. They gathered on Friday and charged towards homes of the Muslims fully aware of the face that it was Friday and all people would be in their respective homes. They knew that the victims keep grass and tobacco in house, so as per plan they threw petrol and kerosene first.”

This is what the judge has said pronouncing the life sentence to 18 people in the Gulberg case, one of the major relating to the massacre in Gujarat 10 years ago. As many as 23 Muslims were burnt alive. Yet the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders say that there is no “legal evidence” against state chief minister Narendra Modi. How can there be any when his government has changed all records and files to remove even a shred of evidence against him?

The Rajiv Gandhi government did the same thing when more than 3,000 Sikhs were massacred in Delhi in 1984. Even FIRs were changed. When a political party in power decides to save the guilty, it goes to any illegal limit to ensure that nothing incriminating is found on record against them. Both the Congress and the BJP are most to blame but several regional parties too spare no effort to fudge reports. It all depends on whether the establishment wants to save the guilty.

After having thoroughly cleansed all official papers, the BJP can safely say that there is “no legal evidence” against Modi. Still some convictions have taken place. Regretfully, it has taken 10 years to get some meaningful justice in Gujarat. It is another matter, however reprehensible, that the Special Investigation Team (SIT), appointed by the Supreme Court to look into cases like the Gulberg, has given Modi a clean chit. Still the fact remains that Eshan Jaffery, a former Congress MP, was burnt alive along with those who had taken shelter at his house.

The judge who pronounced the judgment says: “The objective of this punishment is to remind the accused that their crime was not in their welfare or of the society.” Why did SIT not take into consideration the affidavit filed by senior Gujarat police officer Sanjiv Bhatt is baffling. He has gone on record as saying that Modi had instructed bureaucrats and police officers to allow Hindus “to vent their anger” and he (Bhatt) was present at the meeting where Modi said so. Amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran too has highlighted Bhatt’s testimony in his report to the Supreme Court.

Bhatt has been suspended for having made the statement and he and his family are being constantly harassed by the authorities. He has filed a complaint against this to the police but with no redress. It is not difficult to imagine the situation in Gujarat where Modi rules like a dictator and sees to it that the truth remains suppressed. State home minister Hiren Pandey who began to spill the beans was bumped off. His family has accused Modi and feels helpless in getting justice.

The BJP and Modi are sadly mistaken if they believe that his sins can be washed away by one motivated report or the other. Even after a decade, the tragedy is fresh in the nation’s mind and practically every day there is some reference to his complicity in a discussion or writing. Something or the other crops up to remind the people of the Gujarat pogrom. Still the BJP continues to project him as a prime ministerial candidate in the next general election in 2014.

Similarly, the 1984 massacre of Sikhs remains fresh in the memory of the nation, although Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has offered apologies in parliament. Wounds are still raw and the country saw how the Sikh community rose, in the absence of justice against of the 1984 perpetrators, to protest against the date fixed for the hanging of Balwinder Singh who had killed former chief minister Beant Singh.

The dismal life that close relatives of those killed and uprooted lead does not allow the wounds to heal. It is still worse when the culprits are seen roaming about feely. There is no remedy other than an exemplary punishment to the guilty and those who conspired to commit the crime. Not only Modi, there are many other BJP leaders who were involved in the massacre of Gujarat. They too have to be punished so that the message goes around that anyone, however powerful, will not escape justice.

I do not know what will emerge from the Gujarat tragedy. Will there be an exposure of system which was subverted to bless the planned killings? I found a conspiracy in the case of the Sikhs’ massacre. Since the centre was itself involved I saw it putting a gloss over the system. Still some reports came near to pointing a finger at them. But the Congress government destroyed those reports.

Gujarat too has seen the murder of truth. When the people are brainwashed, they do not rise against injustice. The Soviet Union is an example. It was no surprise that Rajiv Gandhi won a massive victory after the 1984 massacre. It should not have come as a shock that Modi won the state election soon after the Gujarat killings. He may do it again in the state election at the end of this year.

Hatred consumes people and they live in that kind of passion till something happens – the revelation of the truth – to awaken them. The truth has yet to come out either about the massacre of Sikhs at Delhi or of the Muslims at Gujarat. I am confident that the truth will prevail some day as it happened at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa to tell the full story of apartheid.

The writer is a senior Indian journalist.