Dismissing the appeal by Zakia Jafri, wife of former Congress MP Ahsan Jafri who was killed during the 2002 Gujarat riots, against the Special Investigation Team clean chit to then Chief Minister Narendra Modi and others over allegations of conspiracy in the riots, the Supreme Court, in its judgment three days ago, referred to proceedings being pursued to “keep the pot boiling, obviously, for ulterior design” and said “all those involved in such abuse of process, need to be in the dock and proceeded with in accordance with law”.
The bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar, Dinesh Maheshwari and C T Ravikumar underlined that “materials collected during the investigation do not give rise to strong or grave suspicion regarding hatching of larger criminal conspiracy at the highest level for causing mass violence across the State against the minority community and more so, indicating involvement of the named offenders and their meeting of minds at some level in that regard”.Yet it was the Supreme Court which, through hearings and orders over the years, called for “fair and impartial investigation” into the riots cases. Two cases — of the Best Bakery and Bilkis Bano — were moved out of Gujarat to Maharashtra.
On April 12, 2004, while ordering retrial in the Vadodara Best Bakery case after 21 accused were acquitted, the bench of Justices Doraiswamy Raju and Arijit Pasayat said, “Those who are responsible for protecting life and properties and ensuring that investigation is fair and proper seem to have shown no real anxiety. Large number of people had lost their lives. Whether the accused persons were really assailants or not could have been established by a fair and impartial investigation. The modern day ‘Neros’ were looking elsewhere when Best Bakery and innocent children and helpless women were burning, and were probably deliberating how the perpetrators of the crime can be saved or protected. Law and justice become flies in the hands of these ‘wanton boys’.”
On the investigation and the trial court that ordered the acquittals, the judges said, “One gets a feeling that the justice delivery system was being taken for a ride and literally allowed to be abused, misused and mutilated by subterfuge. The investigation appears to be perfunctory and anything but impartial without any definite object of finding out the truth and bringing to book those who were responsible for the crime. The public prosecutor appears to have acted more as a defence counsel than one whose duty was to present the truth before the Court. The Court in turn appeared to be a silent spectator, mute to the manipulations and preferred to be indifferent to sacrilege being committed to justice. The role of the State Government also leaves much to be desired.”
