The Hindu : NHRC fiat to Gujarat on Best Bakery case verdict

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jul 01, 2003

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NHRC fiat to Gujarat on Best Bakery case verdict

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI JUNE 30. The National Human Rights Commission today directed the Gujarat Government to state what steps it intended to take against the acquittal of all 21 accused in the Best Bakery case.

Responding to media reports on the verdict, the Commission directed the Gujarat Chief secretary ``to forward within one week a copy of the judgment of the trial court (and) also inform the Commission what steps, if any, the Government of Gujarat is preparing to take against the order of acquittal''.

This is the third intervention by the NHRC in this case. In its report on the Godhra carnage last year, the NHRC recommended that the CBI investigate the killing of 14 persons on March 1, 2001 in Best Bakery in Vadodra's Hangman Tekri area.

Earlier this month, responding to media reports that the majority of witnesses/survivors had turned hostile, the Commission had directed the Director-General of Police to provide protection to witnesses/survivors so that they depose before courts and the Government-appointed commission of inquiry without fear.

Sridhar Krishnaswami reports from Washington

Human Rights Watch has charged that the ring leaders of the ``massacres committed in 2002'' are still ``roaming'' free in Gujarat.

A 70-page report titled `Compounding Injustice: The Government's failure to Redress Massacres in Gujarat' looks at the track record of the State authorities in holding those responsible for the events of 2002 accountable as also the issue of humanitarian relief to the victims of ``state-sponsored'' massacre of Muslims last year.

Human Rights Watch had urged the Central Government to take over the cases of the largescale massacre in Gujarat ``where the State Government has sabotaged'' the investigations. ``The Government's records on the massacre is appalling. Sixteen months after the beginning of the violence, not a single person has been convicted,'' the author of the report, Smita Narula, has said in a statement.

``More than 100 Muslims have been charged under India's much criticised Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) for their alleged involvement in the train massacre in Godhra.

``No Hindus have been charged under the POTA in connection with the violence against Muslims which the Government continues to dismiss as spontaneous and unorganised'', the report argued.

``Although the Indian Government initially boasted of thousands of arrests following the attacks, most of those arrested have since been acquitted, released on bail with no further action, or simply let go. Police regularly downgrade serious charges to lesser crimes — from murder or rape to rioting, for example — and alter victims statements to delete the names of the accused,'' it said, adding that in numerous instances with a view to covering up their own participation, the police have ``instituted'' false cases against men and women injured in police shootings.

On the issue of the displaced persons, it has argued that the living conditions of more than 100,000 people ``continue to be grossly inadequate''. Those interviewed for the report have told the organisation that they had received ``negligible amounts'' as compensation that ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand rupees.

Human Rights Watch has said that Hindus in Gujarat have suffered as well with thousands of small businesses owned by this community closed down during the violence and strongly condemns the September 2002 massacre of Hindus at Akshardham in Gandhinagar.

What is being pointed is that potentially explosive campaigns are currently under way in States such as Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. ``Members of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad... are distributing weapons similar to those used in Gujarat as well as literature depicting Muslims as sexual deviants and terrorists. Members of both communities live in fear that a simple altercation could become the pretext for largescale violence,'' it has observed.

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