Witnesses for persecution

Witnesses turning hostile in the Gujarat riots cases are caught between telling the truth and anxiety about their future

Following the Supreme Court's order to the Gujarat government to re-open 2,000 summarily-dismissed cases stemming from the 2002 riots, the most noteworthy actions in the state have not been those of lawyers or accused, but of witnesses. Most sensational is the strange, sad story of Zaheera Sheikh and Teesta Setalvad, the witness-activist pair that split in a very public manner this fall after Zaheera alleged that her erstwhile supporter was manipulating her testimony.

Less well known is the tale of Bibi Bano. Witness to her family members' deaths in Ahmedabad in 2002, Bibi subsequently joined a self-supporting female victims' sewing collective called Himmat that provides a modest income while trial preparations are underway. In July this year, when I first met Bibi, she was struggling to make ends meet but appeared psychologically sustained by Himmat's sorority of support. Today, she is lying in an Ahmedabad hospital bed with burns on 75 per cent of her body, the result of what appears to have been a romantic arrangement that turned abusive and nearly fatal in early December.

Zaheera's and Bibi's situations are very different, but in both instances one wonders about why the women were in such vulnerable circumstances. Zaheera is the star witness of the most prominent criminal trial in India today. Why was she living at an activist's house, in the first place, rather than under the protection of a central government agency? Likewise with Bibi. While Himmat's effort is laudable, it seems likely that traumatised, vulnerable witnesses, struggling amidst very trying social and economic circumstances, will fall prey to emotional or financial abuse. Cutting a miserly cheque and posting police outside witnesses' homes apparently isn't sufficient to keep them ready for trial, much less prepare them for life afterward.

The trials stemming from the Gujarat violence consider only past events, frozen in physical evidence and the memories of witnesses. The witnesses themselves, however, continue to exist as members of society. The system has to find a way of stabilising the present in order to get at the truth of the past.

The problem extends to rural Gujarat. Sabina Banu, a Muslim woman involved in a property case stemming from Hindutva gangs' aggression in 2002, has been locked in a struggle with other Muslim members of her village. She would prefer to pursue her case and receive a court's justice; she has relocated to a camp outside Ahmedabad while the matter is under investigation. Sabina says that other Muslims from her village are concerned about their plight if her case is successful. After all, they still have to live there, while she has moved away. It's a difficult question to resolve. Which should be the priority: justice in a trial, or social stability, however imperfect, for those left behind?

For a far stranger case, consider the life of 27-year-old Yusuf Mansuri. Yusuf, along with 11 other Muslims, faces trial for the murder of a Hindu man in the spring of 2002. Mansuri says that he is innocent, and that he was booked for the crime only after he came to the notice of the Gujarat police through his work as an aman pathik (peace volunteer) in his old Naroda-Gaam neighbourhood. The managers of Aman Samudaya, the award-winning peace programme that employs Mansuri, feel that he has been targeted for his community work, not for any involvement in crime. Thus arrives an unusual situation in which Mansuri, out on bail for murder, lives in a dusty Jaamat resettlement camp for riot victims on Ahmedabad's outskirts, and commutes daily to his old neighbourhood to build Hindu-Muslim amity in a nationally-renowned peace programme.

Zaheera, Bibi, Sabina, Yusuf —we could continue to add names, although the point is clear. A criminal justice system has to be more than armed guards and lawyers' briefs. Mansuri's story is different because he's an accused rather than a witness. But with all four there exists a striking disconnect between their roles in the criminal justice system and their immediate personal circumstances.

To a certain extent, this problem is unavoidable. Witnesses, high- or low-profile, have to make future arrangements, and testimony is a way of negotiating matters. But when one considers the many strengths of the Indian State — all variables considered, the Indian Election Commission has to be one of the best institutions of its kind in the world — it's puzzling why more can't be done for the unfortunate few trapped between telling the truth and getting on with life.