Opinion The idea of justice
SC’s order on Muzaffarnagar riots investigation leaves question of political interference unresolved.
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SC’s order on Muzaffarnagar riots investigation leaves question of political interference unresolved.
The Supreme Court’s scathing remarks on the failure of the Uttar Pradesh government to prevent the Muzaffarnagar riots sits in puzzling contrast with its refusal to appoint an SIT or CBI probe on the communal violence. If the Akhilesh Yadav government was indeed “negligent”, does the SC really expect it to prosecute government functionaries and political leaders responsible not only for dereliction of duty but also incitement to violence? The UP government has consistently maintained before the SC that it has been taking all necessary steps to restore communal harmony. Meanwhile, hundreds of those accused of the riots have gone missing or received bail.
Political parties have brazenly offered Lok Sabha tickets to those who purportedly delivered inflammatory speeches during the riots. Earlier this year, the state government sought to withdraw cases filed against some of the accused. The one-man inquiry commission set up in the aftermath of the riots is yet to submit its report to the government. Victims in refugee camps still live in deplorable conditions and in fear. Beyond filing FIRs, the police has done little to investigate complaints. For its part, the Union home ministry has refused to make public the UP governor’s report on the issue.
If all these instances smack of the failure of the government machinery to bring perpetrators to justice, it begs the question why the SC has chosen to rely on the government’s promises. Admittedly, there is a case against transferring every high-profile case to the CBI or an SIT, since it defeats the very purpose of having state agencies to investigate the breakdown of law and order. But communal violence has been a recurrent feature thanks to the state’s complicity or negligence in preventing riots. Whether and how insulated the state police is from its political leadership, therefore, assumes great significance in each context.
Few institutions have been more sensitive to this concern than the SC: the retrials, transfers and fresh investigation of the 2002 riots it ordered in place of the shoddy judicial process in Gujarat stand testimony to this fact. In the present case, however, the SC has sent confusing signals by castigating the UP government, but refusing at the same time to acknowledge that riots investigation will be subject to political pressures — all the more so in the run up to the Lok Sabha elections.
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