One-sided verdict

A particularly prickly issue that has been bothering me over the past few days ever since the staggered verdict in the 1993 Mumbai blasts is being pronounced is this: hundreds of Muslims falsely implicated by rioters and their supporters in the Mumbai riots still languish in jails. When will their pleas be heard? Almost all the 32 police personnel including men of the rank of officer had been given the clean chit after internal departmental inquiries and nothing more. RD Tyagi, the former police commissioner of Mumbai who was responsible for the firing at the Suleiman Bakery where seven Muslims were murdered in cold blood was exonerated after an internal inquiry found him not guilty. Similarly, hundreds of perpetrators of the most heinoud hate crimes against the Muslims of Mumbai are free and about in the city without an aorta of fear...of the law that is.

A relative of one of those convicted for the 1993 bombings remarked: 'Is the police paid to arrest Muslims?' Now, what answer do you give to a question like that when this is what is amply evident and every occassion renders a feeling of victimhood as the cardinal truth. Any Muslim who has wtinessed his or her family getting brutalized, vandalized and murdered would come up with such a question. And aren't they justified in doing so? Why isn't Balasaheb Thackeray in jail yet? Wasn't he the one who incited riots in many parts of the city after large scale violence erupted following the demolition of the Babri Masjid? What about other Shiv Sena leaders who are guilty of delivering hate speeches which led to violence?

The Indian judicial system, the intelligence agencies, and the police has as yet resisted any uncomfortable questions. But one feels the time has come for the Mumbai police and the criminal justice system to come clean on the perpetrators of the Mumbai riots as well as other acts of terror such as the pre-planned and well-excuted Gujarat pogrom. Now that the verdict in the 1993 blasts is being given, ever so slowly prolonging the agony of those accused most of whom have spent more than 13 years in jail, the public pressure for justice to be delivered on the root cause of the blasts is increasing day by day. It is about time the Hindu fundamentalists too faced the music...for a change.