By Mumtaz Alam, India Tomorrow,
New Delhi, 22 Dec 2013: “Today the demand for justice has become a national demand. Democracy will become a meaningless empty word, if you can’t give justice to all these victims of various kinds of repressions in India today,” said Dipankar Bhattacharya, General Secretary, CPI (ML) in an interview with India Tomorrow.
“We find women rape survivors, riot survivors and massacre survivors are demanding justice. And I’ll also add that the entire Muslim youth today, who are being subjected to a very systematic kind of witch-hunt in the name of terrorism, they are demanding justice. So I think this demand for justice, justice for rape survivors, justice for riot survivors, justice for massacre survivors, justice for witch-hunt victims, this is a key demand of democracy today. Otherwise democracy will become a meaningless empty word, if you can’t give justice, ensure justice to all these victims of various kinds of repressions in India today,” said Bhattacharya talking to India Tomorrow on the sidelines of a public hearing on Bathani Tola massacre here last week.
At the public hearing organized by CPI (ML) victims of the massacres orchestrated by Ranveer Sena narrated their sad story and their struggle for justice. In 1996, the Bathani Tola village in Bhojpur district of Bihar, witnessed Ranveer Sena on killing spree – 21 landless people including Muslim and Dalits were killed. The feudal armed troopers of Ranveer Sena repeated in 1997 in Laxmanpur Bathe village in Jahanabad district and killed 58 landless people.
About those massacres, Bhattacharya said: “The whole world knows who perpetrated these massacres. Ranveer Sena did it quite openly…There is absolutely no mystery as to what the massacres were all about and who perpetrated the massacres.”
But even after 17 years of wait, victims have not got justice. Bhattacharya calls it massacre of justice.
Massacre of Justice
“But now what we’re encountering is a different kind of massacre. It is a massacre of justice. People waited for years together. People had to stake everything to fight this legal battle. People gave evidences. Five witnesses gave their own accounts. And the lower courts announced some people guilty. Some people were sentenced to jail, some were given life sentence. But then finally at the Patna high court, we found it [giving a] serial acquittal of massacre. Just as we had a series of massacres earlier, now we are having a serial massacre of justice, where all the perpetrators have been acquitted.”
“This is now the issue and we people have come here with 5 million signatures from Bihar. There is an appeal before the Supreme Court. We expect the Supreme Court to give justice to the people of Bihar. And there is also a memorandum being submitted to the President of India. We expect the President to lend his voice. The President can’t intervene in the legal battle, but the President can certainly lend his voice.”
Amir Das Commission
He demanded reinstatement of Amir Das Commission.
“We are demanding the reinstatement of Amir Das Commission. Amir Das Commission was setup after the Bathe massacre. The then President K.R. Narayanan had described it as an incident of “national shame”.”
The Amir Das Commission was entrusted with the job of finding out the politics behind Ranveer Sena. Identifying the political forces, the leaders, identifying the people who were supporting Ranveer Sena by all kinds of means. But before it could come out with its report, the commission was disbanded by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar.
“When it was disbanded, that was when BJP and JDU both were in power. So both were complicit in disbanding the commission. But today if the commission is not reinstated then I think that responsibility would lie squarely on the JDU; and Nitish Kumar will be held responsible for not reinstating the Amir Das Commission and thus gagging the truth,” he said.
Justice has become a national demand
Bhattacharya said demand for justice has become a national demand because survivors of riots, rapes, massacres and minority witch-hunt are demanding justice.
“Today the demand for justice has become a national demand. So we find women rape survivors are demanding justice. Riot survivors are demanding justice. And massacre survivors are demanding justice. And I’ll also add that the entire Muslim youth today, who are being subjected to a very systematic kind of witch-hunt in the name of terrorism, they are demanding justice. So I think this demand for justice, justice for rape survivors, justice for riot survivors, justice for massacre survivors, justice for witch-hunt victims, this is a key demand of democracy today.”
Without justice, democracy is a meaningless empty word
Bhattacharya said that without giving justice to victims, democracy will become a meaningless empty word.
“Democracy will become a meaningless empty word, if you can’t give justice, ensure justice to all these victims of various kinds of repressions in India today. And I hope that all these demands for justice can come together and there can be a powerful movement of justice for all. Because the incidents will be different, some people have come from Bihar. We know that at the same time these people from Bihar are here, in Muzaffarnagar relief camps, people are crying for justice. So it’s a national demand. And all over the country there are people fighting for justice, they all are together. And this is an expression of solidarity of all the people who are fighting for justice.”
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