Indian Muslims: Justice an ever distant dream
M Ghazali Khan
Eleven Muslims were sentenced, on 1 March 2011, to death for burning a passenger train in 2002 in Godhra, a small town in western Indian state of Gujarat
A special court trying the 94 accused, awarded life sentences to another 20 and acquitted remaining 63.
Most tragic in this is the story of Baitullah Ab Gaffar Teli, a 78-year-old bangle seller, who, along with his alleged accomplices, spent nine years in jail, but died of heart attack only few hours after his acquittal while preparing to return to his hometown, Gonda, in Uttar Pradesh and join his family.
Coach No S-6 of Sabarmati Express was burnt on 27 February 2002 after a reported altercation between the karsevaks (volunteers of militant Hindu organisations) and Muslim tea vendors at the railway station. Fifty-nine of the karsevaks died in the blaze. They were returning from Ayodhya where a Hindu temple had been under construction at the site of the historic Babri Mosque that was demolished by militant Hindus on 6 December 1992.
The Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, a highly controversial figure in the Indian politics and a well-known Muslim- hater cashed in the tragedy. He allowed public processions of the funerals of the dead karsevaks and followed it up by allowing Hindu mobs to go on a killing spree and butcher more than 2000 Muslims. Several women were raped, children were burnt alive, properties were looted and destroyed and former MP, Ehsan Jafri was dismembered and burn alive. Among those who were killed in this madness included two British nationals Saeed Dawood and Mohammed Aswat from Batley, West Yorkshire.
Several legal experts and human rights activists have criticised the Godhra judgment. According to Teesta Setalvad, who has been at the forefront of the fight for justice in Gujarat, the verdict ignores, “...many aspects of official and unofficial, forensic and oral testimonies...
“Worst of all is the fact that 63 persons were acquitted after having spent nine years in jail without bail when the post-Godhra massacre accused roamed free in their areas. Why has the judge not granted them effective compensation for loss of personal liberty, and ordered an inquiry and prosecution of all officials responsible for their wrongful and malicious confinement?”
The judges have concluded that the coach of the train was burnt as a result of a conspiracy. This is in contrast to the rejection by a Central Review Committee on Prevention of Terrorism Act of a similar conclusion reached at by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) in 2003 because, it said, the main witness in the case could not be relied upon. In 2005 a penal set up by the Indian Railways and led by Justice U.C. Banerjee concluded that the fire was an accident and not a deliberate act. Sadly Gujarat High Court later declared that the Banerjee Commission was illegal and unconstitutional.
As early as 2002 Inspector-general of Police (Railways) P. P. Agia investigating the incident had said that he had not found any trace of any preplanning or conspiracy in the tragedy. Far from this, “all was not well in coach S-6 for the Ahmedabad-bound Sabarmati Express on that day. A group of unruly Ramsevaks had boarded the train at Lucknow without reservations and had put to discomfort the 66 genuine passengers of the coach.” (Times of India 26 March 2002).
The court has accepted the claim that Muslims had poured petrol inside coach S-6 and set it ablaze. In this regard the statement of Assistant Director of the Forensic Science Laboratory, Ms Dahia, before Justice G. T. Nanawati and Justice K. G. Shah was even more revealing who said that it “was not possible” to pour “combustible liquid” into the coach of the train. According to him by, “re-enacting the scene of February 27 we found that it was not possible to pour the liquid from outside as the compartment was seven feet above the ground level.” (Indian Express 16 October 2002).
Most stunning and surprising in this context is an undercover interview carried by the India’s well known investigative magazine Tehelka.com of Kakul Pathak, media cell convenor of BJP's Godhra unit who was one of the key police witnesses in the Godhra train carnage case. This is what he told the magazine in a secretly recorded interview, “There seems to be nothing in the case (Godhra)...You see they (the Police) arrested 128 people (Muslims), they should not have arrested so many people. They put everybody in the jail, whoever they could lay their hands on. This was wrong. They should have limited it (arrests) to 5-6 persons only. And those who have done this (carnage) were only tea vendors. Those sell tea at the platform, they were involved in it. After that what happened that business and vested interests kicked in. Some (Hindus and Muslims) were business partners so if you implicate your own partner you could usurp the entire business. That's how the count went up to 128...”
Pathak, however, asserted that in order to save the image of his party and the cause of Hindutva when the time came he would stick to his false testimony. He did stick to this promise. On account of contradictions in his statement the court, however, rejected his testimony.
These innocent victims of this injudicious judgement, based on forged documents and false witnesses, will, hopefully, challenge it in the Supreme Court and one hopes and prays that they will at last get justice. The question, however, remains what is being done to compensate for the complete destruction of the lives of those whose innocence has been established and, as a result, have been acquitted? It is not only them who have suffered, the sufferings of their families are equally tormenting. There are reports of housewives, left with no income and support, having to work as domestic servants and children having to stop going to schools and taking up menial jobs.
Muslim or non Muslim, anyone who commits a crime deserves punishment. No Muslim has ever defended any guilty person. What one finds outrageous, however, is the acceptability of torture, humiliation and detention, without trial, for an unlimited period of time of Muslims. This may sound an exaggeration but this is what the Indian Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, had said to the editors of Urdu language newspapers in April 2009, “Mai manta hun ki hindustan ke musalmanon ko kaafi mushkilat ka samna karna padta hai, kuch samay terrorist ke naam par Muslim navjawanon ko pareshan bhi kiya jata hai(I agree that Indian Muslims face a lot of difficulties, sometimes in the name of terrorists, Muslim youth are harassed),"
But, unfortunately, this happened to be only a pre-election gimmick. Once in power the “clean and honest” Prime Minister forgot everything. Muslims continued to be detained and tortured by the security forces under country’s draconian laws against terrorism.
In January this year, however, Swami (Hindu priest) Aseemanand, an activist of the militant Hindu organisation, RSS, created a tsunami in Hindutva circles when he voluntarily admitted before a magistrate that various blasts, including the ones in Ajmer, Hyderabad and Samjohta Express were carried out by Hindu terrorists.
Swami’s change of heart was the result of the good behaviour and humanitarian gestures of a fellow detainee, Abdul Kaleem , a 23 year old Muslim student, who like several others, had been arrested and mercilessly tortured by security forces.
Except the somewhat lucky Sheikh Abdul Kaleem, released on bail in Hyderabad bomb blast case, and 63 acquitted in the Godhra trial, many other Muslims have been languishing in Indian jails on similar allegations. Despite Swami’s revealing confessions, on 15 March 2011, a special court in Mumbai rejected bail applications of nine Muslims languishing in jail for the last four years for their alleged involvement in Maligaon bomb blasts.
Indian Muslim organisations and human rights activists, needless to say most of them are non-Muslims, have been urging the government to release the detainees and compensate them for their sufferings. Law experts have been pressing for reform to check police power. But be it Narendra Modi’s vibrant Gujarat or Manmohan Singh’s India flexing its impressive economic muscles, Muslims, other religious minorities and weaker sections of the society are struggling to see a silver lining on the horizon.