By Md. Ali, TwoCircles.net,
New Delhi: Prashant Bhushan, the prominent member of Team Anna and also a human rights lawyer, accused the RSS and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi of communalizing the country, blaming their anti-Muslim propaganda for the prejudiced attitude of the Indian Middle class towards a normal ordinary Muslim on the street.
The senior lawyer was speaking after the premiere of “After the Storm”, organized to mark the tenth anniversary of the Gujarat genocide, when more than two thousand innocent Muslims lost their lives and livelihoods in the ‘Hindutva Lab’ in what many term as a State sponsored ethnic cleansing of the minority community.
Alluding to the powerful propaganda by the Right wing Hindutva organizations, Bhushan said saying even people “otherwise perfectly good” are being prejudiced by it.
“Lot of ordinary people who are otherwise perfectly good have developed a prejudice because of anti-Muslim propaganda by people like Modi and others who have been in the government for so long because of RSS,” Bhushan said.
“After the Storm” is a documentary film, produced and directed by Shubhradeep Chakravorty which highlights the trauma faced by Muslim youth who were arrested on cooked up terror charges only to be acquitted by the courts after years in jail.
Bhushan talked about a clear cut pattern where the “communalized” Indian police fabricate terror cases in order to implicate Muslim youths.
“In August 2008 people’s tribunal, we saw a trend that police across the country systematically frame Muslims in terror investigations when they can’t find the culprits. In such cases, they pick up anyone around whom a credible story could be spun,” said Bhushan.
Bhushan highlighted the fact that in the present scenario there was nothing which could happen to a police officer if s/he illegally acts and fabricates terror cases against the innocents.
“It costs nothing for the police to fabricate evidence and file a false chargesheet against an innocent person. In virtually no case, and a vast majority of cases the court does not take the next step of ordering the criminal prosecution, immediate suspension, dismissal and prosecution of that police officer,” he added.
Calling for the need a punishment mechanism for the officers who consciously fabricate cases against innocent youths, the eminent human rights lawyer demanded that a police complaint authority should be set up in states, to whom people can complain and who have the power to order the dismissal of the police officer.
Bhushan also criticized the media in strong terms saying that the media has lost its conscience and ethics and unfortunately the media works hand in gloves with the police in these cases of grave injustice done by the police.
Bhushan demanded a high powered commission to look into all terror cases, “ We should have a very high powered commission of inquiry to look into pending cases, the Ahmedabad blast cases, where nearly 60 people are in prison for the last so many years.”
The documentary “After the Storm” while highlighting the ordeal of the innocent Muslim youths, advocates that they must be adequately compensated, cases against them must be withdrawn and an unconditional public apology should be made by the authorities.
Chakravorty said that the cases of false arrests and fabrication of cases against Muslim youths is not specific to only one state but almost the entire country.