The Mumbai experience

If it is 2,000-plus in Gujarat, it is 1,358 in Mumbai. That’s the number of cases ‘closed’ by the police as “true, but u...

If it is 2,000-plus in Gujarat, it is 1,358 in Mumbai. That’s the number of cases ‘closed’ by the police as “true, but undetected”. They constitute almost 60 per cent of the total number of cases filed during the ’92-’93 riots. Ten years after the riots, forced to inform the Supreme Court how many cases had been re-opened, the head of the Special Task Force (STF) set up to implement the Srikrishna Commission Report, replied: Five. And another three not in the original list.

That the Mumbai police has managed to get away with this admission is a tribute to the ingenuity with which the Congress-NCP ruling combine in Maharashtra has succeeded in protecting itself and its police from the kind of treatment the Supreme Court has meted out to the BJP government in Gujarat. The number also brings home the unpleasant reality: wrongs committed by the police will never be set right by policemen alone. The STF comprised handpicked policemen. It had its own office and investigators. It also had the same mindset as the officers whose misdeeds it was set up to examine. The result? A masterly display of going through the motions.

The Mumbai police had closed these cases not for want of evidence, but because the evidence had been too much for them. The majority of these cases had Muslim victims, who had not only named the assailants, but in some cases also given their addresses. Why, some of these offences had been committed in full view of the police. Re-opening these cases therefore, required no great investigative skill. Yet, the STF succeeded in getting more than 99 per cent of them closed again. Their colleagues in ’92-’93 had used various methods to close the cases. But all that the STF did was ask the victims if they were interested in pursuing the case. No acknowledgement of their colleagues’ misconduct; no guarantees of protection; not a hint that those who looted and burned, would be put behind bars at all, let alone till the trial took place. The government, too, preferred to say nothing: no media blitz on why these cases were being re-opened, no reassurances that special lawyers would fight for the victims; that this time, the entire might of the state would ensure that no one would protect the guilty.

But how could it be otherwise, when the same party, the same individuals even, were in power when the riots took place? How can punishing those it had allowed to get away, be top priority for the Congress-NCP combine? It had had to put up an act because of the petition pending in the Supreme Court. The petition forced the setting up of the STF, eight years after the riots. All this time, the rioters and their uniformed protectors roamed untouched.

The victims meanwhile, had barely managed to pick up their lives. Their rejection of the STF’s offer wasn’t an expression of wanting to ‘let bygones be bygones’. It was, instead, a bitter acceptance of the fact that if they set out to get the justice due to them, they would be on their own.