[Reader-list] Gujarat: On line Letter to NHRC re Best Bakery case

[Harsh Kapoor]

Please sign on and send your own letters/e-mails to the chair of the 
National Human Rights Commission. In the last 10 hours of so it seems 
the NHRC has swung into action but we should keep the pressure on.

Trial of the murderers of Gujarat. Letter to NHRC re. the Best Bakey Case
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/NHRCbbc/petition.html

Harsh

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[ Full text of the letter below:]

To:  The National Human Rights Commission of India

[Please join us in sharing concern about a free investigation into 
the Gujarat pogrom followed by a fair trial of the accused. Append 
your name to the below letter. On the 21th of July 2003 we will send 
this the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC). We would 
encourage all to also write and send similar letters which can be 
E-mailed / Faxed and snail mailed to the chair of the NHRC. [E-mail: 
chairnhrc at nic.in / Fax: (91) + 11-23340016.] We also invite you to 
use the telephone [ 91-11-23340891] and speak to the officials of 
NHRC to press them to move on the Gujarat Bakery Case.]
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2 July 2003

The Chairperson
National Human Rights Commission
Sardar Patel Bhavan
Sansad Marg
New Delhi - 110001

Dear Sir or Madam,

Your Commission recorded the evidence of several persons in 
connection with the violence in Gujarat in 2002. One of these was 
Sheikh Zahira Habibullah of Vadodara, later to become the chief 
witness in the trial of the Best Bakery case. This witness turned 
hostile and denied the testimony which she had given to your 
Commission and to several others and which was widely reported. Like 
her, many other witnesses in the case turned hostile.

In the judgment pronounced in the Best Bakery case last week, all the 
accused were held to be not guilty for want of evidence. Many reports 
in the media have clearly said that the prosecution and investigation 
in this case did not do their duty on account of sectarian 
considerations. It is also widely believed that pressure in some form 
was the reason for the surprising number of prosecution witnesses' 
turning hostile.

Possibly anticipating just such an eventuality, your Commission had 
recommended that several cases, including the Best Bakery case, be 
handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
The Government of Gujarat did not act on this recommendation.

We urge you to take such action as you see fit to right the wrong 
which apparently has been done. The matter is clearly one of human 
rights and therefore within your jurisdiction: because the violence 
in Gujarat in 2002 was directed against the entire Muslim community 
and because that community continues to be the victim of organised 
and sustained discrimination and may legitimately fear that its human 
rights will be infringed in and through sham trials in the many cases 
which remain to be tried.

Yours truly,

Mukul Dube (New Delhi) and Harsh Kapoor (France)

Sincerely,