New Delhi: The 2002 post-Godhra riots were spontaneous and not planned, as described by “pseudo-secular persons, media and politicians” who “rubbed salt into the wound of anguished people”, a Gujarat sessions court said while acquitting 35 people in one of the riots cases registered back then. The order was delivered last Monday.
Additional sessions judge Harsh Balkrishna Trivedi of Gujarat’s Halol (Panchmahal district) further said the police had, in the said case, “unnecessarily implicated” prominent Hindu persons of the area such as doctor, professor, teacher, businessmen, etc.
All these arrests, he added, were made due to the “uproar of pseudo-secular media and organisations”.
The judgment, running into 36 pages, came on a case of rioting and violence registered at Kalol Police Station. According to the FIR, four places in Halol — Delol village, Derol Railway Station area, Kalol bus stand and Kalol talav slums — witnessed large-scale communal violence on 28 February, 2002, a day after the Godhra train carnage.
A single FIR was registered with regard to all the four incidents. The initial FIR did not contain any murder charges and was against the unlawful assemblies of both Hindu and Muslim communities, the court recorded in its order.
The FIR claimed that the violence that took place (at the four places) was a “reaction to the Sabarmati Train Carnage” at Godhra reported a day earlier and that (violence and rioting) were committed by a “Hindu fanatical mob”, in which the accused participated “with a motive to retaliate”.
The Railway Police Force first took up the probe in the case as some of the areas where the violence took place came under their jurisdiction. The case was later transferred to the Gujarat Police.
The court order further noted that a murder provision was added when the police filed a chargesheet in the case against 52 people. Of these, 17 died during the prolonged trial. The prosecution examined 130 witnesses in support of its case and produced numerous documentary evidence.
However, in his order the judge stated that “there was no direct evidence to link the accused to the incident, the police failed to prove they were part of an unlawful assembly and the prosecution also could not corroborate the recovery and seizure of weapons from them through independent witnesses”.
The police theory (of retaliation being the motive behind the rioting) was not accepted by the court, which said that though the prosecution proved violence by unlawful assemblies and damages done to properties, it could not establish “linkage of accused” with the “violence”. Hence, “the aspect of motive of unlawful assembly pales into insignificance”, the court said.
Resultantly, the court noted, the accused had to “unnecessarily face prolonged trial”.
The prolonged trial resulted in the non-examination of the case’s two investigating officers — the first and the last. Both died before they could be summoned as witnesses.
The judge also mentioned “Muslim witnesses” who, he said, were the alleged sufferers of the riots. They, he pointed out, gave widely divergent versions of the riots.
“In our country the standard of truth among the population is very low. In this case, testimonies of almost all witnesses (were) revealed to be wholly unreliable,” the judge said.
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Witnesses ‘every time introduced a new story’
The judge held the witnesses in the case as responsible for the prolonged investigation.
Dissecting their statements, the judge said the witnesses — most of whom were “persons of Muslim community” — gave “repeated written allegations” in the matter.
“Their testimonies do not create any confidence,” he said.
Scrutiny of some statements revealed the witnesses recorded hearsay evidence in connection with the incidents, the judge said.
Some gave versions that were contradictory to their previous statement given to the police, while some could not appear in court as they died before they could be called as witnesses. The depositions, judge added, created serious doubt about the identity of the accused.
The basis for this conclusion was the oral and written representations given by “several persons of Muslim community who were said to be victims of communal violence” to a higher authority for, according to the court, availing of monetary compensation for the losses they suffered during the riots.
On perusal of these representations, the judge found the witnesses “every time introduced a new story”.
In none of the representations did these persons implicate any Hindu individual. On the contrary, each of them stated there was one “Hindu Fanatical Mob”. But there was no way to conclude that the accused named in the chargesheet were part of that mob, the court noted.
The judge also spoke about the “immense pressure” by “pseudo-secular politicians and media” on the Railway Police which, he observed, failed to collect crucial samples from the scenes of violence.
“It may be stated that investigation needs calmness. A calm mind views things better than one stirred by emotions,” the judge said, adding that “he would not blame the police (ASI officer) for not collecting such samples”.
The judge also pointed out that the prosecutor had called “many witnesses for examination”. This, he explained, was because prosecutors are “afraid of specific community-lead NGOs” and “rarely have a recourse”.
‘Hearsay evidence’
The court found loopholes in the police investigation and said most of the accused were implicated only on the basis of statements of co-accused.
It noted that there was no direct evidence to show which specific accused was “holding” and “using specific weapon at the time of violence”.
Even the forensic evidence did not support the prosecution theory (of retaliation) about the incidents mentioned in the FIR, the court said.
In one of the instances, the forensic examination could not establish whether the samples of bones collected from a crime spot belonged to a human or animal. It could not even opine the age and sex of the purported remains, the court observed.
The map of the crime scene, according to the court, remained a “hearsay evidence”.
In the absence of examination of the person alleged to have given information recorded in the map, the court discarded the map sketch as a piece of evidence.
In another incident, the court noted, there was a delay in arranging the test identification parade of the accused. It was done “too late”. Hence, considering this and other “relevant facts” of the case, the judge did not rely upon the test identification parade as corroborative evidence to fix the identity of the accused.
The judge said in his order: “In case of communal riots, a large number of persons is generally involved and the evidence is often entirely of a partisan character. There is moreover, great danger of innocent persons being implicated along with the guilty, owing to the tendency of the parties in such cases to try to implicate falsely as many of their enemies as they can. Therefore, the possibility of innocent persons being falsely implicated should always be borne in mind by the judge.”
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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