Last week, we took a sigh of relief, with a sense of justice-delayed-is-justice-denied though, at the Nov 9 Gujarat trial court verdict sentencing 31 accused to life term for burning 33 persons alive in Sardarpura massacre. Civil rights bodies besides the victims’ families welcomed the verdict. English language dailies also editorially hailed it as a very rare verdict. All in the right earnest as this verdict will go a long way in doing justice to the victims of Gujarat pogrom 2002 that was allegedly by widely acknowledgedly enacted under the direct supervision of Narendra Modi administration. One English daily greeted the verdict for it had sentenced as many as 31 accused for mob violence while in the Bhagalpur riots case a district court in July 2007 had sentenced 14 accused to life term. As for the quantum of punishment in these two cases, it does not lie in the number of accused punished but in the severity of crime and the number of people involved therein. In the latter case the court convicted all the accused, acquitting none; while in the Sardarpura massacre case the court convicted only 31 accused and acquitted 42 accused.
Only five days before the historical Sardarpura massacre verdict, a Raipur district court on Nov 4 had sentenced 51 residents of Nevari to life imprisonment for participating in the killing of Sarpanch of Phulwari, Bholaram Bhardwaj, a member of the Satnami scheduled caste, in Jan 2008. Life of every person is precious and sacrosanct. But the court must have gone through the report that Bhardwaj was an alleged dacoit who had ‘illegally taken possession of 10 acres of land, illegally cut and sold trees worth Rs. 3 lakh’, and that he was killed for shouting abuses at the people of Nevari and refusing to let them cross the bridge (that separates the two villages of Nevari and Phulwari) to visit the temple only because he was not invited at a village fair organised by the people of Nevari.
Let us compare the severity of crimes, speed of the trials and the delivery of justice in these trials. In the Sardarpura case 33 innocent Muslims were burnt alive for no fault of their own and the process of trial took nine long years to pronounce verdict, and that too under the judicial activism of Supreme Court. While in the Nevari case only one person, who happened to be the Sarpanch of the area, was burnt alive and this trial took less than four years.
Let us underline the need that our setup ensures fair and speedy trial and delivery of justice notwithstanding who happens to be the accused and who the victim(s). For justice is the bedrock of a civilized society.