Country of Clean Chits

The hunted and the hunter: they are friends today!

The clean chit given to Narendra Modi by the Justice Nanavati Mehta Inquiry Commission does not surprise anyone in India. India is a country of clean chits. Some samples below.

When the post-Godhra riots were  burning Modi’s state in 2002, about seventy Muslims fled in two vans from the village Kiliad on 2 March. Hindutva mobs attired in saffron robes and khaki shorts pursued the vans and killed all the fugitives. Nine men were arrested eventually for the crimes. All of them were given clean chits by Gujarat’s judiciary on 11 Oct 2002. Seven months is pretty fast for any Indian court to arrive at a verdict.

In the same month of October 2002, twenty-one men implicated in the killing of 40 Muslims in Pandarwada during the same riots were given clean chits in two different cases. Yet another instance of rapid judicial action.

One of these men who got the clean chit, Kalubhai Maliwad, was given the BJP ticket in the Gujarat assembly elections that followed the riots. He won too. The killer became the ruler.

These are just a couple of examples. We know many more killers who became bigger rulers. We know how easy it is for certain people to get clean chits from Indian judiciary.

Those clean chits govern the nation today. From demonetisation to CAB, the country has witnessed a series of follies and misdeeds most of which have been crafted with eerie wiliness to decimate particular sections of people. The tragedy is not having such rulers. Many countries had similar rulers and some still have too. The tragedy is that such rulers continue to enjoy popular support.