Sajjan Kumar’s life sentence may bring some closure to Sikhs hit by 1984 but the court has asked questions of other killings as well
The Congress probably had not bargained for a bad day at the courts so soon after managing some respectable foothold on the electoral ground in the latest round of state polls. But its past ghosts came to haunt it swiftly, dim its newly-minted relevance and remind it that victories remain pyrrhic and there’s still a long way to convince people why they should trust it ever again. While its poor homework led to the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the Rafale petitions as baseless and without concrete evidence of wrongdoing, the Delhi High Court had a mountain of evidence with which to nail it over the carnage of Sikhs in 1984 after Indira Gandhi’s assassination. It reversed earlier judgments and rightfully sentenced one of the pogrom leaders, Sajjan Kumar, to life imprisonment for what it classified as a crime against humanity, which needed closure despite the time lapse of 34 years. Justice delayed may be justice denied but for the generations of the 2,700 Sikh families that have borne the burden of pain, loss and utter humiliation viscerally, having seen their loved ones killed brutally, this is both vindication and reconciliation. Somewhat. It is also a reclamation of their identity that at one time was bracketed under terrorism against the state. The court also listed precedents to justify why delayed justice is necessary to prove that there is no getting away and restore faith in democracy as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong even if the law and order system itself is held hostage by the perpetrators, in this case even enjoying political patronage as members of the ruling party. The court cited the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, which took up an appeal against the acquittal of the accused of mass killings of Bangladeshi citizens in 1971 by sympathisers of the Pakistani Army. The trial began in 2009, 38 years after the incident, and concluded in 2013. A Nazi war criminal was convicted after 56 years. As the court articulated, “no amount of time can be ‘too long’ to satisfy the needs for truth and some measure of accountability, nor can come arbitrary legal time limit be set. The argument that some wounds are too old to be exposed has little moral integrity… the wounds are still there for all to see.” And in this case, it is that of a community that has contributed constructively to our national life.
The bigger problem for the Congress is that unlike Sajjan Kumar, who resigned after the verdict, bigger leaders like Jagdish Tytler and the newly-elected Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, Kamal Nath, will now be facing the heat of inquiry. And though Nath claims the Nanavati Commission had found no ground to implicate him, petitioners of the Sajjan Kumar case say they will pursue a case against Nath as he was present at the spot as is documented. The BJP, seeing a ray of light post the Rafale ruling, is amping up its offensive and building up an emotive narrative for 2019, zeroing in on its nemesis in Madhya Pradesh. But the Congress sustenance is not likely to be affected much considering it sits pretty in Punjab and can sacrifice senior leaders if they are convicted. In such a situation, Rahul Gandhi can even cleanse the seniors to usher in the young and appear he is genuinely concerned about undoing past evil. But can the BJP itself rest easy? The Delhi High Court, after all, even listed the Gujarat riots of 2002 as one of the many genocidal crimes that needed redress as the accused evaded prosecution and punishment by using their political clout and manipulating the police. The court, therefore, called for a strong legal framework that would make the guilty answerable and not immune in real time. There’s no doubt that the BJP has more than a few skeletons that can tumble out if the Congress counteracts with a similar “nail them” narrative. In the end, no political party in a democracy should go scot free or feel free to tweak the system with impunity just because it is in command.
