Author: Ram Madhav, Spokesman,
RSS
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: January 23, 2005
It is for more than one reason
that the Banerjee Commission Report on the Godhra incident lacks any credibility.
The constitution of this commission itself was ultra vires. There was already
a commission headed by Justices Nanavati and Shah investigating this case.
Under the Commission of Enquiry Act, two commissions cannot be appointed
for the same purpose simultaneously.
Second, the hurried manner in which
the interim report has been submitted too smacks of some sinister motive.
The author of the report appeared to be serving his bosses most loyally
in terms of not only the content but also the timing. Producing a half-baked
report full of half-truths just two weeks before some crucial elections
where the fortunes of the current and former Railway Ministers are at stake
speaks volumes about the credibility of this report.
The very fact that an interim report
was sought to be released to the media, as against the normal practice
of submitting to the ministry; and refusal by the head of the commission
to take any questions from the journalists is suggestive of dubious intentions.
Normally senior members of the judiciary are expected to display judicial
conscience in order to uphold the trust of the people in that institution.
But the retired judge heading the commission has caused severe dent to
the image of that institution by accepting to probe while two of his brother
judges were already on the job. His so-called findings make a mockery of
the judicial investigative process. His comments to the media on the day
of the release - when he declared he was unaware of any election in any
part of the country - only compounded this mockery.
According to the commission's findings,
Godhra was just an accident caused by a fire originating from either half-burnt
cigarettes or electrical short circuit or some cooking activity inside
the coach. The entire S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express was burnt down
in just seven minutes killing 58 people - just by cigarette butts! This
is despite the fact that the Railways uses fire retardent and self-extinguishing
material inside its compartments, which do not allow any fire to spread
fast. So how did the panel arrive at such conclusions?
In fact, the commission is only
a departmental inquiry lacking any authority or expertise to go into the
conspiracy angle of the case. It did not consult a single officer who was
involved in the investigation process to find out their findings. It has
not contacted any forensic science expert who has studied the incident
in detail. Yet the commission has jumped to the conclusion that no outsider
entered the coach.
The investigating agencies and forensic
experts have gathered concrete evidence that there was a conspiracy to
attack this train and the conspirators were waiting for its arrival at
Godhra in the early hours of February 27, 2002. They have concluded that
the attackers had used swords to cut the vestibule between S-5 and S-6
coaches, forced their entry into the compartment and set it on fire using
60 litres of petrol, which was collected in cans on February 26, 2002,
from a nearby petrol station and kept ready. A mob of more than 2000 then
surrounded the coach and threw burning rags from outside through the windows,
not allowing the hapless passengers any escape route.
The report of this so-called commission
is theatre enacted for political mileage to the ruling party in the ensuing
Bihar elections. That is not even a major issue because it is for the Muslims
of that State to decide how long and how many times would they like themselves
to be befooled by pseudo-secular lumpens.
But there are larger questions involved.
Can senior members of the judiciary be allowed to become pawns in the hands
of politicians? Can't the Supreme Court evolve a code of conduct for all
members of the judiciary - present and past - in order to sustain the trust
of the people in the institution? Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav has destroyed all
political institutions in his State systematically. It is criminals who
rule the roast in Bihar. Should we allow him to destroy the rest of the
country to let him protect and promote criminals all over the country?
Or should we support and strengthen law and order machinery to do its job
without interference?
Tailpiece: If the Godhra fire was
just an accident, then, according to Justice Banerjee's logic, how to describe
the Best Bakery fire in which large quantities of inflammable material
were already present since it was a bakery? Can we shed tears only for
Best Bakery victims and make a mockery of the wails of those innocent men,
women and children killed in the S-6 coach of Sabarmati Express?
