Author: Tavleen Singh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: August 13, 2006
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/iep/sunday/story/10480.html
Introduction: What prevented 13 judges being
appointed to bring speedy justice in the 1993 serial blasts? The justice system
is a vital tool in the war on terror but right now it compares with our policemen
using World War II rifles against the automatic weapons of terrorists.
It made an interesting contrast. On the day
last week that British police foiled a terrorist plot to commit ''mass murder
on an unimaginable scale'', judgement in the 1993 Bombay bombings was delayed
yet again. As someone who believes that we will not win the war against terrorism
until the Indian justice system is dragged kicking and screaming into the
21st century, I saw the contrast as an example of why the West is winning
its war and we are losing ours. This is not to say that there will never be
another terrorist attack in London, New York or Madrid, what I am saying is
that after 9/11 most Western countries realised that they were fighting a
war and not a small group of lunatics. This realisation caused a change of
tactics. They changed their intelligence and security systems, their laws,
their attitude to groups that breed terrorism and tightened procedures in
their already modern justice systems. There are no judges left in their justice
systems who take three years to mull over their judgements or take hundreds
of pages to put them in words.
The 1993 bombings in Mumbai were an act of
''mass murder on an unimaginable scale'', but the judge thought nothing of
allowing the trial to drag on for eight years and then spending three years
mulling over his judgement. One of the defence laywers, Majeed Memon, pointed
out in a recent television programme that this was because there were 13 separate
bombings to investigate and nearly a thousand witnesses to examine. There
should have been more than one judge dealing with the case, he said. So, what
prevented this happening? What prevented 13 judges being appointed to bring
speedy justice in one of the worst crimes ever committed on Indian soil?
In an age when computers have become an essential
tool of modernity Indian courts still function with 19th-century methods.
The court clerk taps away at a manual typewriter so judges have to read their
judgements in slow motion. Evidence is recorded also in slow motion and the
end result is so much paperwork that the reek of musty files pervades Indian
courts. The justice system is a vital tool in the war on terror but in its
current shape it compares with our policemen using World War ll rifles against
the automatic weapons of terrorists.
Policing is a vital component of this war
but what more can be said about it than that in the 1993 bomb blasts case
most of the 123 people arrested were underlings and flunkeys. Thirty of the
alleged master plotters continue to live free and happy lives in Pakistan
and Dubai with no fear of Indian justice catching up with them. Dawood Ibrahim
Kaskar, the alleged mastermind of the evil plan, went on to marry his daughter
to Javed Miandad's son last year, acquiring a measure of acceptability in
Pakistani haute society. Judging by how much gold the bride wore at her wedding
he might have been able to buy his way in even without the alliance.
Tiger Memon, Dawood's main lieutenant, lives
between Pakistan and Dubai and according to the Mumbai Mirror owns a building
called Kashif Crown on the Shahrah-e-Faisal Road in Karachi. There have been
shootouts in the building and reports of Hizbul Mujahideen connections. There
is not enough room here to list what the other 30 alleged mass murderers are
up to but suffice it to say that nearly all live in reasonable comfort in
Karachi. If a Mumbai newspaper can provide its readers with addresses of the
alleged killers and details of their current activities why is it so hard
for our justice system to catch them?
Our rickety, slipshod approach to bringing
terrorists to book so emboldens them that nearly 200 more people lost their
lives in serial bombings in Mumbai last month. If we count the dead in all
the other acts of terror in India since 1993 we are talking of a death toll
of thousands. What hope is there that things will change when Parliament finds
more time to discuss Natwar Singh's disgraceful rantings and Israel's war
on Lebanon rather than this undeclared war on India? What hope is there that
we will be able to prevent the sort of mass murder that was planned on flights
out of London last week if, God forbid, the evil men we fight were to think
of a similar plan for flights out of Delhi or Mumbai? Meanwhile, would it
be too much to ask that Justice P D Kode take less than two months to read
his judgement in the 1993 bomb blasts case? Why does he need two months?
tavleen.singh@expressindia.com
