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Loud booms were also heard in the region, which the military said came from missile interceptors that had been launched
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Justice at last
IT’S in the fitness of things that a Mumbai court has chosen to deliver its verdict in the Best Bakery case when India is marking four years of Gujarat carnage. The life sentence for the nine men involved in the worst ever pogrom in the country’s history is a victory of justice over forces of evil and a celebration of the noble values on which the Indian democracy is founded.
The proverbial wheels of justice have been admittedly slow to move though and this is only a solitary case in which the guilty have been brought to justice. There are many more, scores of them indeed, who have evaded the long arm of the law so far. Not many of the victims or their survivors are around or have enough courage and patience to come forward demanding justice.
Nevertheless, the verdict in the Best Bakery case is highly significant in symbolic and legal terms. This is one of the most serious instances of organised violence against the Muslims. Over 2,000 members of the minority community died in the carnage and tens of thousands of them were displaced. Many of them, who moved to neighbouring states such as Maharashtra, are still mortally afraid to go back to what was once their home. The Best Bakery case verdict is a message to all victims and their oppressors of course that no crime goes unpunished. Justice may be slow in coming but it eventually does come. This should be a case example to scores of other such cases in Gujarat and elsewhere in India.
The Best Bakery verdict is also a tribute to Indian democracy especially its fiercely independent judiciary. It was thanks to the proactive approach adopted by the Supreme Court, which ordered a retrial outside Gujarat in the case after a Gujarat court acquitted all the accused, that the victims have finally got justice. The courts wouldn’t have acted of course without the involvement of committed and conscientious individuals such as civil rights activist Teesta Setalvad who fought long and hard to get justice for Gujarat victims. The feisty activist-journalist didn’t give up even when the key witness Zahira Shaikh turned hostile and accused her of coercion. It is good therefore that the Mumbai special court has ordered perjury charges against Shaikh who had made a mockery of this trial by changing her testimony several times under pressure from the Modi government. The Gujarat carnage, as BJP’s tallest leader and former prime minister Vajpayee admitted, had been a blot on India’s secular and tolerant image. This verdict should help in washing that stain off. Unfortunately, the individual who orchestrated this outrage continues to remain in power.
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