By Rakesh Sharma
The Malegaon terror attacks of 2006 and 2008 will soon join the growing list of heinous crimes for which nobody will be finally held accountable or punished like the Akshardham attack case or the Haren Pandya assassination etc.
It is a rather familiar script:
a. Post-crime, the Intelligence agencies and Anti Terror Squad (ATS) rapidly crack the case, arrest a few Muslims and extract confessions.
b. Pliant journalists and TV channels treat IB/ ATS leaks as sacrosanct and peddle the concocted story, pronouncing guilt, passing judgements and whipping up hysteria.
c. Independent journalists, activists and the Judiciary ask uncomfortable questions, sift the slender fact from much fiction, put IB/ ATS/ CBI in the dock.
d. Years pass and eventually the Judiciary acquits those framed, often passing strictures against the so-called investigators.
e. This results in gross miscarriage of Justice at multiple levels – those who lost their loved ones do not see the actual perpetrators punished and those who languished in jail for years on fictitious charges do not get compensated but worse – the biased & partisan investigators get away scot free to merrily continue framing others ( think Vanzara, Raghuvanshi and the likes).
Am I surprised that the Malegaon case is following the regular script? Not really, as it was widely anticipated, especially after the special prosecutor Rohini Salian was sacked after ignoring instructions by the new government to go slow on the Hindutva accused.
I’m still curious to see how they’ll exonerate Sadhvi Pragya – after all, the bomb was planted on a motorcycle owned by her! In the 1993 Mumbai blasts case, Rubina Memon was convicted as the car used to transport bombs was registered in her name ( and no, she didn’t drive the car to any of the spots). She’s now serving a life sentence for her ‘role’. If ownership of the bomb-laden vehicle is enough for a conviction, then Sadhvi and Rubina must be treated as equal before the law, a fundamental right India extends to all is citizens, not just some!
There are also multiple phone call records (pre and post blasts) between the Sadhvi and fellow conspirators (and bomb planters?), but more importantly, there are the confessions and statements, recorded in front of multiple Judicial Magistrates, admissible in trial court. How will all of that be erased and glossed over?
Will Malegaon ever get Justice? What do you think?
Rakesh Sharma is a documentary film maker who made the acclaimed Final Solutions, a documentary about the 2002 Gujarat Riots. The text is taken from his Facebook post.