On February 24, nine of the twenty-one accused in the Best Bakery case were convicted of burning fourteen people to death and sentenced to life imprisonment. Eight others were acquitted, while four others have yet to be found.

The judge said he was not awarding capital punishment to the convicts because it could not be ascertained what were their specific roles in the crime.

The court also ordered that perjury charges be brought against Zahira Sheikh, the main witness who changed her testimony twice. In June 2003, all of the accused in the case were acquitted after she and other witnesses withdrew their evidence. She later claimed that this was the result of threats by local politicians, which prompted the judge to order a retrial. However, she again changed her story, claiming that rights groups pressured her into making allegations against the police.

The court also cleared charges against activist Teesta Seetalvad, who was instrumental in bringing the Best Bakery case to light.

Apart from Zahira Sheikh, her brothers Nafisullah and Nasibullah, her mother Sehrunissa and sister Sahira had turned hostile. Eleven of the 14 persons, who were burnt to death, were relatives of the Sheikhs. Only Zahira’s cousin Yasminbanu Sheikh stuck to her original stand. Her testimony was among those that were used to convict the nine accused.

The court has issued notices to the hostile witnesses requiring that they explain by March 20 why they should not be prosecuted for perjury.

The action-taken report of the inquiry committee investigating the 2002 Gujarat pogroms against Muslims has revealed that the police will reopen cases relating to the pogroms. In addition to reopening 1,594 cases regarding the 2002 pogroms, the police will also probe 41 police officials for failing to adequately investigate the cases. The court also ordered the Gujarat government to submit quarterly reports on the progress of the cases.

“This is the first time that we will initiate a departmental inquiry against investigating officers who failed to carry on the probe of riot cases,” Gujarat state police chief AK Bhargava told Reuters.

He said that in the past 18 months, the police arrested 640 accused and registered 13 new cases. However, 40 cases have been closed due to a lack of evidence.

Only a few cases have been brought to court following the pogroms, and of those, only a few have ended in convictions. In December 2005, a special court sentenced 11 people to life imprisonment for killing 11 Muslims during the 2002 pogroms.

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Kashmir on November 13 to protest the deaths of two men they say Indian security forces used as human shields during an operation the previous day. The protestors placed the bodies of the two men on a highway, refusing to bury them unless those responsible were brought to justice. Indian police officers in Kashmir fired tear gas and used batons against the demonstrators. The protest ended when officials promised an investigation.

After being exonerated by the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation), Senior Superintendent of Police Farooq Khan was reinstated on September 14. He had been suspended in 2003 on charges of five fake killings in Pathribal in 2000.

The Pathribal killings were the joint response of the Indian Army and the police to the Chittisinghpora massacre. The Chittisinghpora massacre occurred in March 2000 when thirty-five Sikhs were killed in a village in Kashmir by men dressed in Indian Army uniforms. The Indian Army asserted that the killers must have been separatist militants
dressed in Army uniforms. A few days later, the Army announced that it
had found the militants responsible for the Chittisinghpora, and
claimed that five burnt and mutilated bodies in Pathribal were those of
the militants.

Five years later, the Central Bureau of Investigation has completed its report on its investigation into the faked encounters of Kashmiri civilians in 2000 by the Indian Army in Pathribal:

The Army and police, in a joint operation, killed five innocent civilians who they said were responsible for the massacre of Sikhs at Chittisighpora in 2000.

Since then the family of one of the victims, Jumma Khan, is fighting for justice. They are living under constant threat and feel terrorised.

According to the media, the report lets the senior police officer off the hook for the killings.

In March 2000, 35 Sikhs were killed in Chattisinghpora village in Kashmir.  A few days later police tried to pin the blame on “foreign mercenaries,” killing five people.  After Kashmiris demonstrated against these killings, claiming the victims were Kashmiri civilians, the Central Reserve Police Force and Kashmir police fired on the demonstrators, killing nine more civilians.  A judicial probe later indicted the CRPF for “excessive firing.”  Although the police officers were suspended, the government has not taken any action against the responsible CRPF personnel.

Twenty-one survivors of the 2002 Gujarat pogroms have filed a damages lawsuit against nationalist Hindu organizations, such as the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP),  Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) and Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (National Volunteers Corps).  The BJP is currently in power in Gujarat, and was the ruling party in India before the elections last year.

The lawsuit refers to an attack on a housing society in Gujarat’s commercial capital, Ahmedabad, in which 39 people were killed.

One of those killed was a former Member of Parliament, Ehsan Jaffrey.

His widow is among 21 petitioners who have filed lawsuits…

Three years after the pogroms, no one has been brought to justice.

The committee headed by Justice SC Jain has completed its inquiry into the Godhra train fire, and has reported that it found no evidence of a “terrorist” conspiracy. These findings contradict the BJP government of Narendra Modi, which has always maintained that the Godhra train fire was a planned terrorist conspiracy. 

The three-member committee, which the Congress government set up last year, has recommended dropping charges against suspects held in Godhra under anti-terrorism laws. An unnamed official said that the committee recommended that all 120 accused in the Godhra case be tried under other sections of Indian law, including murder, arson, unlawful assembly, and rioting.

The committee says the fire at Godhra was a result of a provocation at the town’s railway station between passengers on the ill-fated Sabarmati Express and vendors at the station, the majority of whom were Muslims.

The committee report also says that the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) charges against the accused were an afterthought by the prosecution, as they were included in the list of other charges a year after the incident.

The committee has submitted the report to Home Ministry and the Gujarat government; Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah said the state government will place the report before the court.

To fulfill its pledge to prevent violence like that of the 2002 Gujarat pogroms from recurring, the Gujarat government has proposed the Communal Violence (Suppression) Bill, 2005.

This bill grants the government wide powers to respond to communal violence, including the power to arrest and search without a warrant. The bill also increases the punishment for offences in riots and allows the government to set up special courts and police stations. These special courts can hear cases at any protected place and can maintain confidentiality of witnesses. The bill also requires that the government nominate a committee to advise and assist it in relief and rehabilitation efforts.

A recent column in The Indian Express commented on the deficiencies of the bill.

However, the benchmark of the merit of the proposed law should be that if it was enacted when the Gujarat mass violence unfolded, or indeed the ’84 Sikh riots, would it have influenced the conduct of recalcitrant state authorities in terms of ensuring that they take all the necessary steps to protect the victim and prosecute the guilty? The answer is that this law would have made absolutely no difference to a government driven by a communal agenda.

In 2002, the Gujarat government failed to end the violence not because it lacked the power to do so, but because it chose not to. This new bill grants additional powers to the government, which is a meaningless move unless the government is compelled to use these powers to end communal violence.

The law as proposed is at best irrelevant to the challenges of communal governance and, at worst, dangerous, because many of the special powers such as of search and arrest can be used against minorities in the same way as Modi consistently misused the powers under POTA. The governments of today do not require greater powers, but greater moral and legal accountability.

 It is for this reason that we need a law that lists the mandatory duties of the state, failing which they can be criminally prosecuted as well as dismissed.

No riot can continue for more than a few hours without the active complicity of state authorities. This monumental crime against humanity must be explicitly and severely punishable under the new law.

The state must be obligated to take legal action against all hate propaganda, to quickly use maximum force to control communal violence, and to set up relief camps for victims of the violence.

Human rights lawyer Parvez Imroz stated in a press conference on April 30 that the Indian army and the Jammu and Kashmir government are conspiring to kill him.

Parvez Imroz has worked to document human rights abuses perpetrated by the Indian security forces and the Kashmiri army. He is the founder and director of the Public Commission on Human Rights, co-founder of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), and co-founder and President of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS).

On April 30, Imroz told reporters in Srinagar that an unidentified man he called a government-sponsored gunman came to his house at Kralpora area early Saturday morning. According to a press statement:

“The man said he wanted to discuss some case with me. But I’d already told my wife not to open the door to any stranger as many human rights defenders have been eliminated here before,” Imroz said, adding that he was at loss to understand what case the man wanted to discuss at 5.30 AM.

Since the Kashmir Valley has restrictions on civilian movement at night, Imroz was suspicious.

“I’m convinced he was a renegade gunman sent by the Army to eliminate me,” Imroz said. He said the man left after 15 minutes but not before banging the door in frustration.

The Army has opposed the attempts of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), part of the JKCCS, to build a monument in memory of the disappeared. In June 2001, the State Police demolished the monument’s foundation stone the day after it was laid at Eidgah martyrs graveyard. After the APDP again laid a foundation stone on April 21, 2005 for the monument, the army harassed the residents of Narbal, where the stone was laid. Imroz added that the Indian Border Security Force recently barged into a local hotel where JKCCS members and activists from Mumbai were discussing plans for the monument.

The JKCCS has appealed to the international community to take action to ensure the safety of Parvez Imroz and other human rights activists.

Indian Home Minister
Mr. Shivraj Patil
Tel: 23092462, 23017256
Fax: 23794833

Chief Minister, Jammu and Kashmir
Mufti Mohammad Sayed
Tel: 2546766
Fax: 2546466
Fax: 2545529

Director General of Police, Kashmir
Gopal Sharma
Tel: 2452196
Fax: 2473634

Khurram Parvez
Programme Coordinator
J&K Coalition of Civil Society
The Bund, Amira Kadal,
Srinagar 190001, Kashmir
tel # 91-194-2482820 (O)
Fax # 91-194-2478464
Mobile # 91-9419013553

RB Sreekumar, former Gujarat intelligence chief, has revealed that the Gujarat government authorized and encouraged killings during the 2002 pogroms.

In his notes, Sreekumar wrote that after his April 2002 appointment as intelligece chief, senior government officials asked him to kill Muslim extremists allegedly involved in rioting. In May 2002, the state police chief told him that Gujarat’s most senior civil servants had spoken about “eliminating those Muslim extremists who are disturbing the communal peace of Ahmedabad.”

In a June entry, Sreekumar wrote that a senior civil servant, G Subba Rao, told him to “eliminate” anyone who tries to disrupt a Hindu religious event, and added that this was the decision of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

The tribunal has issued notices to Narendra Modi and other government officials requesting that they reply to the allegations by May 9.

Meanwhile, the Gujarat government has released a statement that Sreekumar’s charges are false and motivated by his denial of a promotion.