There are two things special about the two special courts set up in Mumbai exclusively for the ’92-’93 riot cases, ostensibly a step towards implementing the Srikrishna Commission Report. One, neither the magistrates nor the public prosecutors (PPs) have been given a copy of the Commission’s Report. No special PPs have been appointed, nor do the existing ones get any special salary, given the sensitive nature of their work.

Two, very few of the cases being tried here since the last three months find a mention in the Report. The selection of cases assigned to these fast track courts is strange indeed. Many have been registered against ‘unknown persons’, and involve offences such as taking out processions, shouting slogans, throwing stones, bricks and soda water bottles (the three always seem to go together!), ‘rioting’ and damaging property. The mobs dispersed after we lathi-charged/fired, is the testimony of most policemen. Wonder what all the fuss about the ’92-’93 riots was about!

Only a few cases here find a mention in the Commission Report, but these are being treated no differently from the others — neither has the PP been briefed about them, nor the investigating officer, nor the policemen currently assigned to follow them up. The only people who know their significance are the lawyers defending the Sena accused. The rest of the accused have to rely on lawyers who practice here anyway, for whom the Srikrishna Commission Report is only a headline.

So whether the accused are top Shiv Sena leaders or other lower party functionaries who’d allegedly been allowed by the police to do whatever they wanted in the riots; whether the case has been re-opened after a cover-up so blatant that the Commission has commented on it; the PPs get to read the tattered case papers just minutes before the case is called out — if at all the original papers are provided to them!

... contd.