The debate over the elections and their results has drowned out most other issues in the country in the last few weeks.
This was to be expected in a democracy when a leader, known to be controversial, was the centre of attention in the electoral battle. But the Supreme Court judgment in the Akshardham terrorist attack case of 2002, pronounced last week, should draw attention to serious problems relating to the rule of law which is the life breath of democracy. The court released all the six accused in the case, three of whom had been sentenced to death and others given jail terms, after finding them completely innocent of the charges against them. The attack on the Akshardham temple in Gandhinagar, Gujarat in which 30 people were killed and many injured, is one the worst terrorist attacks in the country’s history. The terrorists who mounted the attack were shot dead by commandos but the police later framed charges of conspiracy and collusion against six others and prosecuted them.
A POTA court convicted them and the Gujarat high court upheld the convictions. The Supreme Court has made stinging criticism of the lower courts’ failure to evaluate and assess the evidence and the prosecution which apparently framed the accused. It has not spared the state home department also, which was then headed by Narendra Modi, for sanctioning prosecution on flimsy or non-existent grounds without application of mind. The court said that the story of the prosecution crumbled at every juncture. The investigation itself was a giveaway. There was no progress in the case for about one year after the incident and so it was handed over to the crime branch. The very next day the crime branch rounded up the accused, created evidence against them and framed charges. They have complained of inhuman torture and one of them even said that he was given the choice of terrorist cases to be implicated in.
It is a terrible comment on the discharge of justice if innocent people could be sentenced to death on false charges and manufactured evidence. All the accused have lost all these years of their lives which they have spent in jail. How can they be compensated? It has happened in other cases of terrorist attacks and even in cases of ordinary crimes. The victims are usually the poor and those who belong to the weaker sections and minorities. That calls into question the fairness of the system of justice.