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Cracks in polity : Judiciary shows the way, Executive falters |
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Two events last week showed that while the public has reason to believe that the high and mighty in the country can get away with heinous crimes like murder, judicial intervention can be a way out of the situation.
A special court in Mumbai, in a retrial of the Best Bakery massacre during the post-Godhra riots about four years back, sentenced nine of the 21 accused to life imprisonment after finding them guilty of leading the mob which torched the Bakery and burnt alive the people inside. The Supreme Court had ordered the retrial by a special court outside the state - Gujarat - where the incident happened after all the 21 accused in the case had been set free by a sessions court in Vadodara in the first trial for lack of evidence. The Gujarat High Court had upheld the verdict of the sessions court. The matter was raised by the National Human Rights Commission in the Supreme Court. Later the Gujarat Government also moved the apex court against the acquittals in the Best Bakery case which had shocked the nation’s conscience. On April 12, 2004, the Supreme Court had ordered retrial of the case in Mumbai.
Seventeen of the 21 accused in the case faced charges in the Mumbai retrial as the rest remained untraceable. Both the trial and the retrial were marked by witnesses turning hostile. Along with the conviction of nine people, the Mumbai Court has issued perjury notices against all the witnesses including Zaheera Shaikh, the prime witness, who had turned hostile during the retrial.
During the year long retrial, the prosecution examined about 75 witnesses of whom Zaheera Shaikh and her family members said they had not seen the accused torching the bakery. However, Zaheera’s estranged sister-in-law Yasmin Banu identified the accused in court. Defence lawyers took the line that Yasmin Banu was at her parent’s house, when the Best Bakery incident occurred, but the prosecution produced a video film showing Zaheera and others, including Yasmin Banu, being rescued by police.
The defence questioned the authenticity of the video film and said it was fabricated. It also claimed that the identification of the accused by witnesses was faulty as they were called by nick names in the police statement of witnesses, whereas in the court they were identified by their full names.
Perjury notice may be trend-setter
Observers say that the Mumbai special court has shown the way for other such cases where witnesses are influenced to turn hostile. It invoked its power to punish hostile witnesses for perjury, possibly the first time a court has done so in a high-profile case.
The court issued notices, returnable by March 20, to key witness Zaheera Shaikh and her family (all of whom turned hostile) asking why they should not be prosecuted for making false statements under oath. If found guilty, they face a maximum of seven years in jail.
Although courts in India have the power under sections 191 and 193 of the Indian Penal Code to punish for perjury, it is rarely invoked. In other countries, such convictions are fairly common; author Jeffery Archer was convicted in Britain, so was the key witness in the Kanishka case in Canada.
The Mumbai trial court judge’s decision to invoke his powers of perjury could well be the beginning of a welcome trend in criminal jurisprudence if other courts in the country follow suit.
Significantly, the Mumbai special court judge, Abhay Thipsay, found that the allegations leveled against NGO, Citizen for Justice and Peace, and its secretary Teesta Seetalwad, of holding the key witness Zaheera Shaikh captive at her flat, were baseless. The NGO had fought for the victims of the Best Bakery carnage taking their case from the Gujarat High Court to the Supreme Court in order to get a retrial in another state. Seetalwad remarked after the judgement was delivered, “It is a vindication of the retrial. With the order, the judge has sent the message that mobs indulging in such horrific crimes would not go scotfree.”
The Left parties have demanded that the CBI should be asked to investigate other post-Godhra riot cases so that punishment is handed down to the guilty. CPI(M) politburo member Sitaram Yechury said that the verdict has shown the dubious role of the Narendra Modi Government in Gujarat. He said the UPA had come to power with the objective of checking communal elements and the Manmohan Singh Government should take appropriate follow up action. The BJP, on the other hand, claimed that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi had contributed to the outcome in the Best Bakery case by his compliance with the Supreme Court order for retrial in Maharashtra. Party spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said the BJP wanted justice for the victims of both the train attack in Godhra and the bloodshed that followed. “The riots in Gujarat were unfortunate. We have always been of the view that the guilty both in the train arson and post-Godhra attacks cases should be punished,” he said.
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