Justice delayed is not always justice denied. Sometimes law takes time to take its course. But justice ultimately prevails notwithstanding the ultranationalists’ desperate attempts to help the culprits evade the long arm of the law. This course of poetic justice stamped once again its mark on the plural polity of Bharat on March 27 when the first minister in the Narendra Modi cabinet of Gujarat, Maya Kodnani, and VHP leader Jaideep Patel were made to surrender before the Special Investigation Team (SIT) appointed by the Supreme Court to reinvestigate the Gujarat carnage of 2002.
As many as 98 Muslims were killed in Naroda Patiya and 11 in Naroda Gam. Eye witnesses in the Naroda killings have deposed before various investigating agencies stating that they saw both the accused instigating the rioters. The call records of Kodnani’s cellphone on February 28, 2002, prove Kodnani’s presence in Naroda area for at least 40 minutes in the morning and also in the afternoon. Newspapers have reported details of cellphone records, suggesting Kodnani’s and Patel’s movements and conversations on that fateful day.
The arrest of these two Hindutva fanatics is in fact a step towards triumph of truth and justice in the Gujarat carnage cases. It will help restore people’s, especially victim survivors’, faith and confidence in judiciary.
Hats off to Justice D.H. Waghela of the Gujarat High Court, who called a spade a spade. While striking down the anticipatory bail that a lower court had given to Kodnani and Patel, he underlined the significance of communal harmony and rule of law and asserted that ‘religious fanatics do not belong to any religion,’ that they are ‘no better than terrorists who kill innocent people for no rhyme or reason,’ and that killing innocent people in the name of religion is ‘absolutely a slur and a blot on a society governed by the rule of law.’
Justice Waghela’s assertion that ‘an organised crime for mass murders of innocent people would call for imposition of death sentence as deterrence’ is worth noting. As the jiggery-pokery of the people in political corridors would have it, our system perhaps lacks the guts to exhibit the ‘deterrence’ that can go in the long way to contain the rising pace of fascism in the country. It is high time we presented this much needed deterrence. And in view of the fast changing scenario in the country we can hope only judiciary can do it in the greater interest of the nation and to save her from the conspiracy to make India a singular Hindu Rashtra. SIT should further investigate the case and interrogate these two Hindutva leaders to know more details of the entire conspiracy so that all other culprits of this most heinous carnage in which the nation witnessed to her utter chagrin and shock ‘wanton display of hatred, destruction of properties and killing of innocent men, women and children’ might be brought to book. The sooner the better.