The Hindu : 'Try carnage cases outside Gujarat'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jul 27, 2003

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'Try carnage cases outside Gujarat'

By K.P.M. Basheer

KOCHI JULY 26. In the light of the acquittal of the accused persons in the Best Bakery massacre case, all pending cases relating to last year's Gujarat carnage should be tried outside the State by independent prosecutors, Rajinder Sachar, civil rights campaigner, jurist and former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court has demanded.

In an interview with The Hindu here on Saturday, Mr. Sachar, a former president of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), said that the acquittal showed that the Gujarat riot victims would not get justice if the cases were tried within the State. The key witness in the Best Bakery case, a young woman whose 14 relatives had been burned alive, had become a hostile witness during trial. Mr. Sachar said that the young woman, already traumatised, had been under threat of elimination during the trial and that was why she had provided wrong information to the court. Moreover, the prosecutor, appointed by the Narendra Modi Government, could not have been expected to be unbiased.

The Best Bakery acquittal was a shame on India. "The blame has to be shared by all, including the higher judiciary," Mr. Sachar said. Since the atmosphere in Gujarat was still not conducive to a fair trial and the Muslim community was in the grip of fear, all the pending cases should be tried in some other State. Only then would the eyewitnesses and the victims be able to give evidence against the culprits. He wanted independent prosecutors, not public prosecutors appointed by the State Government, to conduct the case.

Mr. Sachar said that the PUCL would petition the Gujarat High Court to order a retrial of the Best Bakery case. In normal circumstances, he pointed out, the State Government would have moved a revision petition and asked for a retrial. In this case, since the State Government would not do this, the PUCL would move the High Court. The PUCL had come out with a report "Genocide in Gujarat".

Uniform civil code

Mr. Sachar alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party was trying to make political capital out of the controversy over the uniform civil code. It was creating a row in view of the coming round of Assembly elections, just as it did with the Ayodhya issue whenever an election was on the horizon. He noted that the Supreme Court's suggestion with regard to a uniform civil code, while deciding another case, was only a general observation that was not legally binding. Only one Judge — the Chief Justice — of the three-member bench had made the observation.

However, the BJP had made it a political weapon for electoral advantage in the four States that would go to the polls soon. The issue was being directed against Muslims, he said.

He said Parliament should not legislate a uniform civil code. The initiative should come from the minority communities themselves. Asked if it was proper to have separate sets of laws for each religion, he said the laws were the same for everyone. Only, a fraction of the laws — comprising personal laws — were different for these communities.

He suggested to the Sangh Parivar leaders that they first seek uniform personal laws for all Hindus. He noted that the rules and customs, for instance, of Hindu marriage varied in different parts of the country and among different castes.

He said gender discrimination existed among all communities. Hindu women had to wait until the 1956 Hindu Succession Act for the legal right to equal inheritance, whereas Muslim personal law had conferred the right of 1:2 share of the parents' property (one portion to the daughter, two portions to the son) on Muslim women much earlier.

Commenting on the human rights situation, he said that atrocities on Dalits and the so-called lower castes had grown across the country in the past few years. Rights violations concerning the minorities had become common and there was fear and insecurity in the minds of Muslims.

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