Jagdish Tytler’s fall unlikely to raise hopes of Mumbai riot victims

It took 40 years for Jagdish Tytler to be charged in court for crimes the world knew he had committed. Within a month of the assassination of former prime minister Indira Gandhi, two human rights organisations brought out a report titled ‘Who Are The Guilty?’. The title referred to those who were accused, by survivors and eye-witnesses, of involvement in the violence against Sikhs that followed the assassination. Tytler, then a Delhi MP, figured in that list.

Tytler was later named twice by commissions of inquiry into the 1984 violence, yet he graced the Cabinets of Rajiv Gandhi, P V Narasimha Rao, and Manmohan Singh. His ministerial career came to an end only in 2005, after he was named by the Nanavati Commission.

Even after that, it’s taken this long to frame charges against him. Imagine what his victims must feel today, having waited four decades for this day.

Can Tytler’s fall raise hope for those in Mumbai who, like Delhi’s Sikhs, were also targeted 31 years ago during the post-Babri masjid demolition riots? Unlikely. For though the fight to bring Tytler to book was difficult, it was still easier than that fought by Mumbai’s victims. Indeed, except for one man, Mumbai’s victims — and the community as a whole — gave up long ago.

The reason does not lie only in the difference between the two mass killings. In Delhi, 2,733 innocent members of only one community were killed over three days; a massacre in India’s capital that the world has not been allowed to forget. Mumbai did not see a pogrom; of the 900 who died in two phases of the violence, 575 were Muslim, 275 were Hindu. (Srikrishna Commission Report Vol 1, Chapter II, Para 1.24)

However, the main reason why Mumbai’s victims gave up was because those they wanted to bring to book were not politicians; they were policemen. Undoubtedly, Tytler’s clout as a ruling party politician protected him for four decades. Thrice since 2005, when the CBI took over his case, the ‘premier investigative agency’ let him off. But thanks to the tenacity of those pursuing him: the petitioners, their lawyers, and the community which rallied around them, the evidence against him never weakened, forcing the courts to reject the CBI’s closure reports.

Ironically, while being a politician gave Tytler an advantage, it also proved to be a chink in his armour. After the Nanavati Commission named him, he was forced to resign thanks to the ensuing parliamentary furore. In 2009, the public outcry against the CBI’s second clean chit, which climaxed in a Sikh journalist throwing a shoe at home minister P Chidambaram, forced the Congress to drop Tytler (and Sajjan Kumar, similarly indicted for the 1984 violence) as candidates for the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

Such considerations, however, never weighed against the policemen indicted for crimes ranging from ‘cold-blooded murder’ of innocents to ‘extreme communal conduct’ by the B N Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry into the Mumbai riots. (Srikrishna Report, Vol 1, Chapter V, Para 1.30).

Except for former police commissioner R D Tyagi, the rest remained faceless. Indeed, this anonymity helped the Maharashtra Police project these 31 as part of a homogenous, uniformed entity that was being unfairly targeted by a judge for simply having ‘done its duty’ under very trying circumstances. The bogey of ‘demoralisation’ of this vital arm of the State was effectively propagated through the media, which chose not to inform the public about their inhuman conduct, documented by the commission. Nor did the government, and, most importantly, the Opposition.

It suited both the then-ruling Congress and the Shiv Sena-BJP to shield the indicted policemen: the former because it didn’t want to alienate its police force just to uphold human rights, especially of a minority, and the latter because they themselves had been indicted by the commission for their involvement in the violence against Muslims. (Vol 1, Chapter 3, Paras 1.1 and 1.2).

As successive state governments used every legal strategy to shield these policemen, it became clear that this was a fight against the full might of the State. When the CBI's closure report against one of the indicted policemen was accepted by the court, nobody except the victim objected. Today, as the last pending trial of policemen charged with the murder of eight unarmed Muslims drags on, not even the victims attend it.

The sight of a politician who seemed beyond the reach of the law finally being brought to trial restores one’s faith in democracy. But for Mumbai’s victims, Tytler’s story also brings the bitter realisation that however mighty a politician is, he is in some ways, less powerful than a sub-inspector.

(Jyoti Punwani is a senior journalist.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.