Fourteen people died in the Best Bakery carnage. Twenty-one persons were accused. All were acquitted. The judge who acquitted them blamed the prosecution. ...
Wrong. Institutions get tested only when they have to extract accountability from popular icons. After the riots, Narendra Modi is hardly an icon outside Gujarat. How might the performance of nhrc and the media be described in a far bigger case involving a popular icon?
The case was earlier mentioned in this column. It was researched by Ram Narayan Kumar who recently published his investigative book, Reduced To Ashes—a classic work. Consider the bare facts. In 1995, a Punjab human rights activist, Jaswant Singh Khalra, alleged in a press conference that the Punjab police illegally cremated thousands of unidentified bodies. In April that year, the human rights organisation associated with Khalra petitioned the Supreme Court. In September, Khalra was kidnapped and disappeared forever. In response to a public interest litigation, the Supreme Court ordered the CBI to investigate Khalra's disappearance as well as the allegations he had made at the press conference.
Rebutting Khalra's press conference, Punjab's director general of police K.P.S. Gill had told the media, "Thousands of Sikh youth who had left for foreign countries under fake names and documents were claiming to be missing persons killed by security forces in encounters." He said they "were missing with the consent of their parents".
But the CBI found nine police personnel guilty of Khalra's murder. The CBI also confirmed that the police had illegally cremated 2,097 people in Tarn Taran. Of these, 582, all non-terrorists, were identified.
In August 1997, the SC designated the NHRC to deal with the case and vested it with the full powers of the apex court. Six years have passed. The NHRC has accomplished nothing. The media has reported nothing. Instead, in March 2002, DPM Advani and Punjab CM Amarinder Singh sought amnesty for all the tainted policemen. The media echoed them. Gill frequently criticises human rights organisations on TV. He should respond to the Supreme Court and CBI.
Chile's Pinochet had 3,000 murder victims. Milosevic of Serbia had 2,000. Both are called war criminals. Tarn Taran is one of the 16 districts of Punjab. It alone had 2,097 victims. Think about that.