The Supreme Court today directed the Gujarat government to provide protection to witnesses and victims in the Best Bakery case and other sensitive cases arising from the communal riots and asked the state government to bring all the records regarding the Best Bakery case for the next hearing.
The court turned the petition moved by the National Human Rights Commission into a public interest petition to avoid technicalities over the maintainability of the original petition.
The bench headed by Chief Justice V N Khare asked counsel for the commission whether the petition was maintainable when the state government itself had filed an appeal before the high court in Ahmedabad.
Counsel P P Rao for the commission replied that the investigation was faulty and 37 out of 42 witnesses had turned hostile because of the intimidating atmosphere in the state.
Therefore, the trial should be conducted outside the state. Such an order can be passed only by the Supreme Court. Moreover, the investigation should be conducted by an independent agency, which could be ordered only by the Supreme Court.
The high court has no power to order the CBI to inquire into the incidents again. The appeal before the high court, with the present evidence and atmosphere, would be an eyewash, according to him.
He read out the judgment of the trial court which had passed severe strictures against the police for implicating wrong persons and fabricating evidence against them resulting in the acquittal of all 21 accused.
Senior counsel T R Andhyarujina, who also supported Rao, pointed out that the commission had been writing to the state government about the threat to the victims and witnesses.
Its fears have come true. The appeal of the government to the high court also came as a surprise on the eve of the Supreme Court hearing, he said.
The Supreme Court, while issuing notice to the central government and the state government, asked the latter to furnish within four weeks the statement of witnesses given to police, the statement of witnesses before the trial court, memo of the grounds of appeal filed in the high court and names of the lawyers appearing for the state government in the appeal case before the high court.
The bench, which also consisted of Justice S B Sinha and Justice Arun Kumar asked the government to state what steps it had taken to protect the victims and their family members and the action taken against those who threatened them. The judges asserted that they would monitor the progress of the sensitive cases starting from the Godhra carnage.
In a related development, Zahira, who retracted her statement in the trial court for fear of retaliation action by communal fanatics, moved a petition for protection of self and retrial of the case outside Gujarat. The court did not pass any order on that petition.
The Supreme Court noted that the conviction rate in most trials, especially in communal riots, were low and asked the central government to state within two weeks whether any scheme had been formulated to implement the recommendations of the Malimath Committee which had studied the defects in the criminal justice system.
