A judgment, a foundation | Opinion News, The Indian Express

A judgment, a foundation | Opinion News, The Indian Express

Written by Balakrishnan Rajagopal |Updated: January 4, 2019 12:50:14 am

The writer is associate professor of law and development at the department of urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

A judgment, a foundation

The Sajjan Kumar verdict promises to form the basis for an evolving Indian law of accountability in cases of mass violence.

Sajjan Kumar was awarded life imprisonment by Delhi High Court for his role in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. (Express file photo/Praveen Khanna)

The verdict of the Delhi High Court in the Sajjan Kumar case has been welcomed by most commentators. What has not been sufficiently appreciated is that one of the main lessons we must take from the verdict is that the need is stronger than ever for a root-and-branch police reform.

Indeed, some parts of the “administration of justice” are so rotten now, or are caught up in impossible imbroglios like the CBI, that strong political leadership is needed for a bold and visionary approach to reform. Although the problem is well known, no leading political party or mass movement has managed to focus attention on police reform. As the Delhi High Court points out, there were multiple failures in the administration of justice after the 1984 violence, starting with the repeated failure to file FIRs, abetment of the crimes committed by the mobs and failure to prosecute or gather material evidence.

As highlighted by the Court, there is also the key issue of the lack of a credible witness protection programme in India, which hampers the willingness of witnesses to come forward or to maintain consistency. Many cases arising from the Gujarat violence of 2002 have had serious trouble maintaining a credible and consistent witness line up due to fear, intimidation, and retaliation, most notoriously in the Best Bakery case where 37 of the 73 key witnesses including Zahira Sheikh, her mother and her brothers retracted their statements before the judges.

One of the most important innovations of the Sajjan Kumar verdict is the reliance on the crime of criminal conspiracy under Section 120B of the IPC to convict Sajjan Kumar, and also expand the conviction of the other accused. To my knowledge, this the first time that an appellate court in India has relied on the charge of criminal conspiracy to convict individuals for mass crimes.