Pawar’s letter nails Naik

The letter dated December 22, 1992, portions of which Pawar read out in court, implied that as the army had been deployed in December, there was no way that Naik could not have known the procedure to deploy it when the riots broke out in Mumbai again in January 1993. “I do not know why he changed his mind afterwards,” Pawar said. He also categorically stated, “There was no feud between him and me at that time. I was giving him my full co-operation as Defence Minister.”

Pawar declaimed that the Union Defence Minister had little role to play in the actual deployment of armed forces anywhere a function performed only by army authorities under the direction of the civic administration, notably the District Magistrate. He pointed out that any delay in calling in the army had been on part of the state government.

To support his argument he pointed to the fact that the then Commissioner of Police Shrikant Bapat had told him (Pawar) that he had been “impressing” upon the state authorities for three days the need to call in the army but to no avail.

At his subsequent meeting with Naik at the latter’s official residence, in the presence of army and civil officials, the discussion had centred round the fact that the army could not take independent action without the authorisation of the District Magistrate. Moreover, the army top brass pointed out that the soldiers were unfamiliar with the lanes and bylanes of Mumbai and would need civic assistance in the matter.

But there was never any complaint made about the delay by the army authorities in deploying their troops. The ineadequare numbers were due to heavy deployment in the terrorist-ridden Punjab, Kashmir and North-east as well as Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan where similar riots had broken out, he said.

Pawar also denied having functioned as the de facto chief minister during the January 1993 riots. The then Prime Minister had despatched him to Bombay as he felt that with his administrative experience in handling the law and order machinery over the years would enable him to bring the situation quickly under control, he said. This, however, did not mean that Naik as the then chief minister was in any way incompetent, he added. Moreover, he said Muslim outbursts in December 1992 following the Babri Masjid demolition should not be viewed as a Hindu-Muslim conflict. “Their action was against the establishment. Muslims felt that the government had let them down despite giving an assurance of protecting the masjid and so targeted the police stations, public institutions and buses,” he said. Any communal colour was due to celebrations and ghantanads (ringing of temple bells) which had hurt the Muslim sentiment, he said.