New Delhi, July 29 (The Telegraph): The bullet had slammed into Farooque Mapkar in 1993 while he was praying in Bombay.
Mapkar, 47, had suffered the gunshot wound two months before the Bombay blasts — during the post-Ayodhya riots in which 900 people were killed in the financial capital of the country.
Amid claims of “justice” and “closure” for the families of the 257 people who were killed in the March 12 Bombay blasts, some of the victims of the January riots ask why 15,000 pages of evidence are not enough to convict the rioters.
“Justice in terror cases in India is of two types. If the victims are predominantly Hindus, then there is popular discourse and outrage, and justice is at least seen to be served. If they are not, then justice is delayed and denied,” said Mapkar who was hit while praying at Hari Masjid in Mumbai’s Andheri East.
Mapkar, who works in a cooperative bank, wondered why there is no discussion on the riots despite the Justice B.N. Srikrishna Commission report linking the three most tumultuous events in the 1990s: the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, the communal clashes of 1992 and 1993 and the Bombay blasts of 1993.
“One common link (between the riots and the blasts) appears to be that the former appear to have been a causative factor for the latter. The serial bomb blasts were a reaction to the totality of events at Ayodhya and Bombay in December 1992 and January 1993. The resentment against the government and police among a large body of Muslim youth was exploited by the Pakistan-aided anti-national elements. They were brainwashed into taking revenge, and a conspiracy was hatched and implemented at the instance of Dawood Ibrahim,” the report submitted in 1998 had stated.
Out of the 900 dead in the Bombay riots, 575 were Muslim and 275 Hindu, while 50 were from other communities.
Only three convictions took place in the riot cases. In 2008, a Mumbai court sentenced former Shiv Sena MP Madhukar Sarpotdar and two party activists to a year’s rigorous imprisonment. Sarpotdar was immediately granted bail and he died in 2010 without serving his sentence.
Mapkar and his team of lawyers continue to seek justice as they challenge a CBI closure report on the Hari Masjid case, which acquitted the police, including sub-inspector Nikhil Kapse, who was indicted by the Srikrishna Commission.
“This (Memon) is a man who brought huge amount of evidence to investigators against the blast accused, he is being hanged. There was enough evidence from eyewitness accounts to show Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray’s complicity in the riots and the role of police officers, but nothing happened to them. He was and remains a hero. Some of the police officers got promoted. It suits governments to play politics and use these cases for political gains,” said Mapkar.
The Srikrishna Commission report had come down hard on the late Thackeray.
“From January 8, 1993, at least,” the commission said, “there is no doubt that the Shiv Sena and Shiv Sainiks took the lead in organising attacks on Muslims and their properties under the guidance of several leaders from the level of shakha pramukh to that of Sena chief Bal Thackeray.”
Relying on eyewitness accounts, the commission described Thackeray as the “veteran general commanding his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate….”
The commission was disbanded by the Sena-led government in January 1996. It was later reconstituted on public demand.
