Politicising crime

Even when Railway Minister Lalu Prasad set up the U C Banerjee panel last September to inquire into the Godhra massacre, on the grounds that this involved his ministry since a train compartment had been burned, it was obvious that he had seized on a technicality and that the larger purpose was to play politics on a contentious issue.

The results are now there for all to see. The panel's interim report has been released just before the elections in three states including Mr Prasad's Bihar, and some of the committee's experts seem to have been in the dark about the release of such an interim report.

Indeed, it is not clear why an interim report was needed in the first place, since the committee's extended term is due to expire in six weeks.

This sequence would ordinarily cast doubt on the committee's functioning and findings, especially since they are at variance with much of what has been stated officially till now.

However, it is also not possible to dismiss the Banerjee findings (that the fire was an accident and not the result of a conspiracy), since it seems to echo those of a government forensic laboratory in 2002 itself.

Whatever the truth of the matter, it could end up in the public mind as being one judge's opinion versus another's, since there is already a full-scale commission of inquiry that has been going into the episode, not to speak of cases filed by the police against large numbers of people who are alleged to have been behind the conspiracy to cause arson and murder the train's passengers.

If there was in fact a conspiracy (which is a matter to be decided by the courts), those involved in it could use the Banerjee report to rebut the prosecution case.

The usual practice in such matters is to have either a departmental inquiry into a matter, or a full-fledged judicial commission of inquiry. Once the latter (Nanavati-Shah) had been constituted, Mr Prasad should have refrained from muddying the water. In doing so he has only made a contentious matter even more fractious and complicated.

This and some of the charges now being aired in relation to the police handling of the Kanchi Shankaracharya raise disturbing questions about the politicisation of the investigation of crime, and as a consequence of that the possibility that there could be miscarriage of justice.

The Tamil Nadu chief minister is correct in holding that no one is above the law, but there is the undeniable fact that the Supreme Court, while granting bail to the Shankaracharya, made it clear that it didn't think much of the prima facie evidence gathered by the Tamil Nadu police.

The fact that the junior pontiff was arrested hours after the Supreme Court granted bail to the senior one only adds to the doubts. If matters as high-profile and vital as these could get blatantly politicised, spare a thought for the ordinary investigation of everyday crime in the country.