Best Bakery Case: The Larger Political Implications

Nalini Taneja

THE judgement in the Best Bakery Case, which resulted in the acquittal of all the 21 accused, is not simply a criminal neglect of justice, and its consequences are therefore likely to be far more serious than in other cases where the guilty go unpunished. The issue can only be one of great concern to the left and democatic movement in this country.

The manner in which the acquittal of the Hindutva criminals responsible for the crime (in which fourteen people were burnt alive -- 11 Muslim and 3 Hindus -- when the bakery was torched during the ‘riots’) was achieved by the State tells a lot. As pointed out in an earlier Editorial, this massacre has been one of the best documented of all cases filed during the State-sponsored communal genocide that Gujarat witnessed last year.  The survivors publicly named those who attacked them, and they also petitioned the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), filed affidavits before the Concerned Citizens Tribunal, and some of them travelled all the way to Delhi, amidst fear and insecurity, to speak to the national media.

WHOLE EXERCISE A BIG SHAM

This was also the first case to come up for hearing—a fast–track Court as they say. There was considerable public attention, and most people who were eagerly following the case already knew that those being tried were in actual fact guilty. Most people following the case, and the government on its part also knew that this was a test case. It would show the reach of the Sangh Parivar into the echelons of government and the judiciary as much as it could expose to the entire world the farce this government was presiding over. Newspapers have covered this entire battle for justice in great detail.

All this notwithstanding, long before the 44-day trial ended it was obvious that the whole exercise was a big sham, and the guilty managed to go scot-free. How did this happen? It has been made out that there has been a “miscarriage of justice” on account of vicissitudes of evidence presentation by both the police and the victims. The NHRC chairman Justice A S Anand told a private TV channel that he believed the acquittal of all the 21 accused in the Best Bakery case in Vadodara by a special court was prima facie a "miscarriage of justice" and the state government must appeal against the verdict.

Yet the matter is not one of technical flaws in framing the case, even if that is the method adopted, and is deliberate. To look at this case as simple criminal neglect in a simple criminal case would be to underestimate the political import of the judgement. Of the 120 witnesses listed by the prosecution (in this case the government representing its victimised citizens), more than a third never made it to the witness box. Of the 73 who did, more than half turned hostile. The main witness Zahira Sheik, the daughter of the Muslim owner of the bakery, was escorted to the court by the local BJP MLA, Madhu Srivastava, on the day that she went back on her charges. Subsequently she mysteriously disappeared, but has now come out to say how she, her mother and relatives and all other witnesses have been subjected to threats, intimidation and terror, and she was even told plainly that she would be killed on the way to Court if she did not change her version.

It is a sad and painful commentary on the state of affairs that a young girl, and many like her, who have known the worst that lives can possibly have in store and had shown exemplary courage throughout this one year, should be forced to identify as benefactors and protectors those very persons who ruined and scarred them for life, and that too within the precints of a Court being held to provide them justice.

COLLUSION OF STATE MACHINERY

As obvious from newspaper reports, since the genocide in early March last year there has been absolutely no doubt about the collusion of the State machinery in the killings. The police sometimes actually led the killers, at other times withdrew protection from the victims, and also made sure that the assailants got away. On most occasions there was a deliberate refusal to record or to deliberately distort first information reports. The Best Bakery case did somehow reach the stage of a fast track trial, thanks to the courage of survivors and concerned citizens’ groups. But the long arm of the Modi government has pre-empted any punishment.

It is also clear, as it was from Day 1, that with Narendra Modi still at the helm of affairs in Gujarat, and the BJP- led government at the centre refusing to take cognisance of the plight of the Muslims in ‘their’ Hindutva-ruled state, no justice is at all possible. As pointed out in the earlier Editorial on the issue, the judge, who acquitted all the 21 accused, is on record saying, "that a violent mob caused the death of 14 people in the incident is beyond question, but the court does not have an iota of evidence about the involvement of those accused in the crime”.

There is, of course, the complicity of the public prosecuters and the police, and the simple inference that no prosecution can take place if the prosecuters themselves are not interested enough in persecuting. Obviously in this case neither the government, nor the police were interested in punishing the guilty—in other words those pleading for the victims betrayed the victims. The case, therefore, can legitimately be said to have fallen on grounds of lack of evidence. Yet there is something to be said on the judicial process that goes beyond technicalities.

Why was the judge not concerned, at any time during the proceedings, or even later in his judgement, with the fact that those who stood their ground for a whole year had suddenly reversed their statements? When he delivered the judgement he knew pretty well the facts of the case and the truth, but still conveniently hid behind the façade of technical and procedural explanations for inability to establish conclusive guilt. That a judge dealing with legal cases connected with the Gujarat outrage should do so tells its own story.

LITTLE SIGN OF JUDICIAL ANGUISH

There are remarks on the inability of the police in the prosecution process, but not any other sign of judicial anguish or crisis of conscience, no drawing of lessons on what the judiciary can/should do with regard to ensuring justice when the Executive arm of the state decides otherwise. After all, the Judge was not just the judicial arm on the side of the government, performing a cold exercise in weighing evidence. He is also a human being and a citizen of this country with certain prerogatives arising from his being a part of the judicial machinery in this country, committed to rendering justice. We must understand that not every person in his place/another judge would have let the occasion pass by without serious reflection on the matter, which is as much a crisis of the judicial system and of civil society as of our political system.

In fact, even this Judge has not let the occasion pass by without his comments. He turns a full-fledged social scientist and analyses the Gujarat killings in terms that reveal a lot about what is happening to our judicial process. According to an Indian Express report (July 20, 2003), HU Mahida sees the causes as: British policy of divide and rule; the emphasis on industrialisation at the expense of villages; frustration among “meritorious” people because of reservations etc. In the course of the deciding on the killings of one minority he echoes the Sangh Parivar in holding that “even as the (Parsi) community practised its religion, it inculcated the spirit of nationalism. We should all learn from this community”. The Best Bakery incident is “a fall out of the Godhra carnage but the overall question of communal riots in this country is a fall out of the divide and rule policy bequethed by the British”. And all reservations must be abolished because: “The Constitution provided reservations for only 10 years…the period of reservations has been extended from time to time at the expense of the country”. All this Mahida has put in black and white in his 24-page verdict. 

But what about the role of the hate campaign and the State? The judgement says that those in the “mob” responsible for killings run away, and it is bystanders who are caught by the police, implying that those arrested may be innocent. 

The acquittal is bound to have social and political implications other than just adding to the demoralisation of the Muslims and to the cynicism of those who have doubts in the legitimate processes of the institutions of the State. Not necessarily the lessons drawn will be positive, and that is something that we must be aware of and alert to.