November 21, 2024

The way investigations are conducted into and the way trials are undergone for high profile cases makes a mockery of law and the judicial process in India. It also shows the investigating agencies in very poor light. Instead of fairness, professionalism and transparency that should be the hallmark of any criminal investigation, these agencies like the ED, CBI, SFIO and NIA or the various SIT’s constituted for specific crimes, come across as biased arms of the government in power. This means that they will work overtime to nail those who are not in the good books of the ruling dispensation and weaken the case of those aligned with it.

Nothing else can explain how all the accused in the Mecca Masjid Dargah case got acquitted for want of clinching evidence against them. The case witnessed two distinctly different kinds of attitude by the NIA. Before 2014, when the NDA came to power, things were moving in one direction and it seemed that a tight case would be built to nail the accused. But post 2014, things started moving in a different direction. Witnesses turned hostile or retracted their statements, the NIA started to go-slow on matters and it seemed it was working to get the accused acquitted.

In the end, this is what happened. Swami Aseemanand and his co-accused will laugh their way to home as free men because the sloppy, and possibly compromised, NIA could not prove their crime. As Prime Minister Modi has said more than once but in a different context, there are no good or bad terrorists. Hence, terrorism by Hindutva outfits is as bad as that by Islamic radicals. But if acts of terror by Hindutva outfits go unpunished as investigating agencies weaken the cases then there is something seriously wrong with our country.

After 11 years, as the court has released all the accused, the bigger question is that if they did not do it, who did? The blasts were not the handiwork of isolated individuals. They were part of a conspiracy and the planning and execution must have involved a lot of people. Should we allow those criminals to roam free? What will happen of the case now? It is rumoured that the NIA is not going to appeal against the acquittals as it has been advised that the evidence is very weak. So will the perpetrators of that ghastly crime go unpunished? Will India never know who conspired to kill those innocents and sowed hatred among communities? Another disturbing factor in the case is the resignation of the judge who passed the acquittal order immediately after pronouncing the same. The whole case gives the impression of many things being fishy.