dna edit: What Shinde forgot to write

The Centre’s responsibility towards innocent Muslims falsely implicated in terror cases cannot end with the sanctimonious letter written in this regard by Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde to state Chief Ministers. Faced with harsh criticism from the BJP for writing the letter, Shinde turned defensive and said he was only doing his job as Home Minister.

In his eagerness to make a political statement with an eye on upcoming elections, Shinde correctly identified a problem but only offered an unactionable remedy, that was kept deliberately vague. The Home Minister sought strict action against police officers accused of mala fide arrest of minorities. But are police officers the only ones who err? What about the executive and the judiciary which are supposed to act as checks on the unlimited powers that police officers enjoy in India?

In the letter, Shinde claims that he was responding to representations from various NGOs and civil rights activists. Shinde may as well have been responding to a widely-cited recent survey which showed that 56 per cent Muslims and 40 per cent Hindus seemed to agree that Muslim youth were being falsely implicated in terror cases. Even the BJP’s response to Shinde sums up the limits of political discourse in India. The BJP, predictably, dubbed Shinde’s missive as “unconstitutional and questionable” claiming it divided the country on communal lines. Such a reductionist response, besides obfuscating the issue, deprives the BJP of questioning the credentials of various Congress governments in the states on this count.

A recent investigation by media portal gulail.com, which secretly video-taped prosecution witnesses in the Pune Germany Bakery blast case, shows these young Muslim men alleging that they were brutally harassed by the Maharashtra ATS into implicating death-row convict Himayat Baig. Recently, the Andhra Pradesh government offered monetary compensation to 70 Muslim men who were wrongly accused in the 2007 Hyderabad Mecca Masjid blast case.

In 2011, a Delhi court acquitted seven men arrested by the Delhi police in 2005 after a fake encounter. These incidents, all in Congress-ruled states, could be the exception rather than the norm. But it is unacceptable that citizens of a democracy must suffer such ignominy. These young men have spoken how the incarceration has traumatised them for life while the stigma of being accused of terrorism persists around them and their families.

Many, including Muslims, will dismiss Shinde’s letter as a mere electoral gimmick. Other than replacing the draconian POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) with the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), the UPA has little to show besides lip service to Muslim concerns. The Centre recently notified 39 special courts to try National Investigation Agency cases. All fresh terror cases, including extension of custodial remand, must be heard only in these courts.

Final charge-sheets must be filed within 180 days and trials fast-tracked. To prevent its misuse, Section 45(2) of the UAPA mandates vetting of chargesheets by a sanctioning authority of the government before they are filed in court. Until last year, the Delhi police was unaware of this crucial section. A robust oversight mechanism involving the judiciary, executive, media and citizenry is the solution that Shinde’s letter forgot to address.