Tags:
Journalism of Courage
If it is 2,000-plus in Gujarat, it is 1,358 in Mumbai. That8217;s the number of cases 8216;closed8217; by the police as 8220;true, but undetected8221;. They constitute almost 60 per cent of the total number of cases filed during the 8217;92-8217;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.
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 STF8217;s offer wasn8217;t an expression of wanting to 8216;let bygones be bygones8217;. 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.
