A probe and proceedings

As a follow-up to the Srikrishna Commission report on the Mumbai riots of 1992-93, the STF files FIRs against former Police Commissioner R.D. Tyagi and 16 other police personnel.

POSSIBLY the most telling statement about the future of the findings of the Srikrishna Commission, which probed the Mumbai riots of 1992-93, came from Narayan Rane. Commenting on the ruling Democratic Front's (D.F.) decision to pursue the Commission report, the former Shiv Sena Chief Minister told a television network recently that no inquiry commission's recommendations had ever been implemented. He wondered why the D.F. government was not letting sleeping dogs lie.

The State government, however, says that it will take the report and recommendations further because that was promised in the Congress(I)'s election manifesto. The second major constituent of the coalition, the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), is also committed to reopening the issue. Its president Sharad Pawar had said in 1998, when he was in the Congress(I): "When the Congress comes to power in the State, we will resurrect the report."

Recent developments indicate that the State government is keen on redeeming its pledge, but it remains to be seen whether its intention in doing so is to reassert the rule of law and render justice to the riot victims or simply to use the report as a tool in a game of political one-upmanship.

In January 2000, the D.F. set up the Special Task Force (STF) as the first step in the process of prosecuting persons against whom evidence had been gathered by the Srikrishna Commission. Explaining the legalities involved in prosecuting these persons, A. Majeed Memon, criminal lawyer and vice-president of the State unit of the Samajwadi Party, said: "The evidence gathered by the Srikrishna Commission cannot be used in a criminal trial. For this to happen, an investigative agency has to work on individual cases. Upon completion of this investigation a charge-sheet is to be filed and the case brought up for trial by a judicial officer."

The STF, the investigating agency, is attached to the Mumbai Police and is headed by K.P. Raghuvanshi, Additional Police Commissioner. Earlier it was suggested that the investigations be handled by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Mumbai Police, but the Samajwadi Party shot down the idea on the grounds that such an investigation would be biased because many officers of the Mumbai police had been named by the Commission.

Memon said that attaching the STF to the Mumbai Police was also "not a fully satisfactory" arrangement since it would send wrong signals to the riot-affected people. "It would appear that vested political interests are at work... that there is a lack of total commitment to prosecuting those named by the Commission," he said.

The STF has been in the public eye ever since it filed on May 25 the First Information Report (FIR) against R.D. Tyagi, former Commissioner of Pol-ice, Mumbai, and 16 other police personnel in connection with the murder of nine Muslims in 1993.

One of the most controversial incidents during the riots was the police firing at Suleiman Bakery in Mumbai on January 9, 1993. The police had claimed that suspected terrorists were harboured in the bakery. Tyagi, then Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), ordered the Special Operations Squad to storm the bakery and an adjoining mosque. Nine persons were killed in the operation. Tyagi claimed that before storming the bakery he had urged those inside to open the doors, but acid-filled bulbs, stones and soda water bottles were thrown at the police from the bakery. (While recording Tyagi's statement the Commission observed that it was strange that none of the people outside received any injuries when these missiles were hurled from the bakery's rooftop. The Commi-ssion also called the police "trigger-happy".)

The STF investigation says that Tyagi himself, along with another accused, entered the bakery and the neighbouring mosque and shot dead nine people. The investigation reveals that these nine persons were unarmed, and there is no proof that they were terrorists as claimed by Tyagi.

Tyagi's affidavit denies all this and specifically states that he did not order the squad to open fire. He says the squad opened fire in self-defence.

Given this background and the fact that the STF had framed murder charges against him, it was expected that Tyagi would be arrested on June 7. But that did not happen. An anticipatory bail petition filed by Tyagi is before the Bombay High Court. "Given the facts, this (postponement of a decision on the petition by the High Court) is inexplicable," says Memon. "The incident is not in dispute - there were nine cases of homicide caused by bullets. Legal cognisance of this fact has been taken, and the suspects have been named and identified. In such cases arrest is the only course of action. And yet Tyagi is not arrested. Justice should not only be done, it should also seen to have been done. In the instance of Tyagi neither has been achieved."

THE other high-profile person against whom the STF has been conducting inquiries is Gajanan Kirtikar, who was Minister of State for Home in the Shiv Sena government. The STF filed a charge-sheet against seven persons including Kirtikar and Shiv Sena legislator Nandkumar Kale in connection with the communal riots at Jogeshwari in north Mumbai in January 1993. They have been charged under Sections 37 (3) to be read with Sections 135, 153 and 506 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The charges include illegal assembly, illegal carrying of arms, and the delivering of inflammatory speeches. Kirtikar had been indicted by the Commission for his role in instigating the Jogeshwari riots by inflammatory speeches in January 1993. Kirtikar and the four Shiv Sainiks accused along with him were granted bail on June 6.

Minister of State for Home Kripa Shankar Singh said that Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray and former Chief Minister Manohar Joshi would also be proceeded against as recommended by the Commission.

The creation of the STF to carry out the factual recording of evidence from the riot victims and file cases came as a shot in the arm for the efforts of the Commission. Ever since it was constituted in January 1993, the Srikrishna Commission had had an on again-off again career. When the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) combine came to power in 1995, it expanded the Commission's scope to include the bomb explosions in Mumbai in 1993. In January 1996, the same government disbanded the Commission. Four months later it was reinstated under pressure from the Atal Behari Vajpayee government. Many people thought the saga had ended when Justice B.N. Srikrishna, a sitting Judge of the Bombay High Court, submitted his report to the Shiv Sena-BJP government on February 16, 1998, but it was not to be. The government rejected the report, arguing that it was biased against the Shiv Sena, against Hindus and against the police.

Reacting to the obvious attempt at shelving the report, human rights and other organisations opposed to the Shiv Sena's way of thinking filed public interest petitions. Their demand for an unbiased investigative agency led to the creation of the STF.