Laughing All The Way to the Inquiry

Dilip D'Souza -- PUCL Bulletin, July 2000: "In the card catalogue of the Asiatic Library in Bombay, you can find drawers-full of cards for reports of inquiries into something or the other. There's the report of the Shah Commission which investigated the 1975-77 Emergency; the report of the Madon Commission that looked into the 1970 Bhiwandi riots; Justice Srikrishna's report about the 1992-93 riots in Bombay. There is even a report of an inquiry into an Alitalia plane crash in 1962, and one on -- this is true -- the improvement of marketing of fruits and vegetables in Bombay in 1932.

So prepare yourself for one more farce masquerading as justice for the families of those 3000 Indians murdered purely because they were Sikh. It's 16 years since they died so horribly. If that massacre shames us all, it must shame us even more that in 16 years we haven't been able to hand out even one significant punishment for it. Not even after previous inquiries have told us in no uncertain terms who the powerful men were who instigated the killing. Yes, we know from those inquiry reports just what men like HKL Bhagat, Sajjan Kumar, Lalit Maken and Jagdish Tytler were up to in November 1984.

The Commissions of Inquiry Act, 1952, is itself the source of the futility, though I doubt its drafters could have expected governments to abuse its spirit so cavalierly. The Act gives commissions "the powers of a Civil Court" in various respects. Except for two. As a 1983 judgement commented: A "commission is only fictionally a Civil Court ... there is no accuser and no specific charges for trial [and] the government [is not] required to pronounce ... on the findings of the commission."

In other words, commissions of inquiry cannot prescribe punishment (though they can recommend it), and the government can ignore their findings.

So what purpose does an inquiry serve anyway? The Act tells us that it is supposed to restore "public confidence."

Meanwhile, the government has managed to get a man called Ranjit Singh Gill extradited from the USA to face trial here in India. Gill is wanted for the 1985 murder of Lalit Maken. And why did he murder Maken? Because like Kumar and Bhagat, Maken was also seen egging on mobs to slaughter Sikhs in 1984. Unlike them, Maken paid for his crimes with his life.

For that revenge, we call Ranjit Singh Gill a terrorist and have spent years trying to bring him to trial. Fine. But I cannot help wondering: what did men like Bhagat and Thackeray spread, but terror? Yet they are not in Canada or the USA. They don't need complicated extradition procedures to run their torturous course. These men are right here, right now, among us, unrepentant and unpunished. And, guarded by heavy security at our expense. Oh yes, they are laughing at us. I have no doubt."