On December 26, when the Gujarat High Court gave an oral judgment dismissing the state government’s appeal and prayer for a retrial in the notorious Best Bakery case, this newspaper held back from commenting editorially on it. It chose instead to wait for the detailed order in order to understand the court’s rationale in taking the stand it did. Well, the full text of the judgment came out on Monday and all that we can say is that it has both disappointed and saddened us.We are disappointed and saddened for four reasons. One, because its tone and tenor goes against the spirit of the apex court’s observations last August, when the chief justice of the country, no less, had expressed his unhappiness that the “criminal justice system is not in sound health”. There was nothing to suggest that the Gujarat High Court was gripped by a similar angst, a similar drive for self-correction, a desire to ensure that justice must be done and seen to be done. Two, because this case had exercised not just the apex court, but the National Human Rights Commission, which had first sent a team to Ahmedabad to study it and followed this up with the unprecedented step of filing a special leave petition asking the apex court to set aside the judgment and call for a retrial of the case outside Gujarat. Three, because this case was one of the best documented of all the barbaric incidents that had occurred in post-Godhra Gujarat and if justice is not delivered in this case, it is unlikely that others would fare better. Four, because ultimately it concerns the lives and well-being of people who are powerless to counter not just the unspeakable atrocities perpetrated against them but the deviations, prevarications and deceits of the law and order machinery and the political system. The two-judge bench appears more outraged over the “anti-social” and “anti-national” elements (read NGOs) who reached out to Zaheera Sheikh and her family, rather than the rioters who killed 14 people. In any case, while questioning the delay in Zaheera Sheikh’s demand for a retrial, the judges overlooked the possibility that it may have been the public outrage that greeted the acquittals which had given her the courage to make such a demand.Indeed, the only deep concern that seems to come through in this verdict is that for the reputation of the judicial system in the state. As the two judges put it: “This time, the target is none else but the judiciary of the state and the system as a whole, which is a matter of grave concern.” If only the judges could have looked beyond their own fraternity!
