Author: Editorial
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: August 2, 2003
When the 21 accused in the Best
Bakery case were acquitted by Additional Sessions Judge HU Mahida in a
Vadodara fast track court, a section of the media cried foul over a "miscarriage
of justice". This was only to be expected, given recent history.
These professional agitators had
hauled the Narendra Modi Government over the coals during the post-Godhra
violence last year, till they were put out of business by the caretaker
Chief Minister's massive victory in the Gujarat Assembly polls. At the
time, questions began to be asked about whether or not the media had gone
overboard in hounding Mr Modi, thereby handing him a martyr's halo that
paid rich electoral dividends. It is but natural accumulated biases should
have been waiting to spill over, and Best Bakery seems to have broken the
dam. Yet, while this section of the fourth estate is free to prioritise
polemics over reasoned judgement, the same was not expected of the National
Human Rights Commission, headed by no less than former Supreme Court Chief
Justice AS Anand. By moving the apex court for a fresh probe into the case
by an 'independent' agency and retrial outside Guja-rat, the NHRC gives
the impression of having been borne away by the renewed tide of media hostility
against the Modi regime.
The apex court has been asked to
give judicial processes the go-by in the demand that trials of four other
riot-related cases too be shifted. This amounts to an unacceptable intrusion
in the judicial turf. It also implies a crusade is once again afoot to
demonise the State as well as judicial functioning within it. The fact
is, Justice Mahida could hardly have ruled other than he did given lack
of evidence against the accused, and what he called shoddy police investigations.
The defence simply had a better case than the public prosecutor whose star
witness, Zaheera Sheikh, made statements that were taken into account before
arriving at the final verdict. That she later changed her story-alleging
she was intimidated into lying under oath- is not something the court could
have taken cognisance of even before it occurred! The NHRC's activism is
misguided, focusing solely on the testimony of Zaheera and her mother,
whose self-confessed perjury erodes their credibility as witnesses. Their
charges have also been rubbished by other witnesses as well as Zaheera's
sister-in-law, Yasmin Banu, who alleges she was disowned for refusing to
make trouble for residents of the area who helped save her family on the
day Best Bakery was attacked.
Given these claims and counter-claims,
any impartial observer would ask how the NHRC can presume to be the best
judge of the truth. Another question is why it dozed through the trial,
not lifting a finger to prevent what it now calls a denial of human rights.
Equally fit for interrogation are its shaky locus standi in placing the
judicial system in the dock, and its arrogance in advising the apex court
on what course it should adopt. If indeed the Mahida ruling was a travesty
of justice, the aggrieved parties could appeal, and public and media glare
could itself ensure the guilty are punished. Shifting cases outside Gujarat
will open a Pandora's box: With a precedent set for Best Bakery, countless
litigants would clamour for transfer of cases from one State to another.
And if the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots should demand retrials,
the judiciary would be hard pressed to explain why Zaheera should be a
special case. That would not do much for communal amity, since it would
radicalise social groups perceiving themselves to be unequal in the eyes
of the law.
