Stop stereotyping Muslims!

The secular and democratic claims of India will be exposed as hollow if Muslims wrongly implicated in criminal/terror cases are not rendered full justice. In most of the cases, police does not follow the Supreme Court guidelines in picking up Muslim youths. The Supreme Court guidelines on arrest say that within 8-12 hours of making any arrests the police must inform the family of the person concerned about his arrest and the location where she/he has been kept by the police. These arrests were also in violation of the UN's International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, of which India is a signatory. Police implicate them in dozen of cases in one go and after a long span of time the accused prove their innocence. Sadly, they continue to lead a life of ignominy even after their acquittal.

The government should evolve a mechanism to decipher between reliable and concocted evidences and cases in which innocent Muslims are kept under detention for years without being charge-sheeted should be dispensed immediately. In its overly dramatic reporting, the media also comes out with insensitive and irresponsible reports peppered with inaccuracies. Media should realize its duty to save the dying credibility of journalism and hope to restore public faith in it. Every time there is a blast or riot, Muslims are falsely implicated and are branded anti-national.  In cases where the court has held that evidence has been concocted or misrepresented by the investigating agencies to implicate innocents, action must be taken against those responsible. The governments-Central or the concerned State- must issue an apology for the grievous loss of dignity and livelihood that innocents have suffered on account of the false charges foisted upon them. All police officers who have engaged in torture, illegal detentions, forced custodial confessions and fabricated evidence should be suspended, booked and tried under the law. The recommendation of the National Commission for Minorities that the compensation amount be recovered from the salaries of the policemen responsible for falsely implicating the young men should be implemented. Can one be compensated for the physical, mental and social torture that one was subjected to and for the hardships faced in jail? Government should go one step ahead and provide them government jobs according to their eligibility. This is an issue which the Government and the larger polity cannot afford to ignore.

For your reading, The Hindu Editorial dated 20-09-2013

Compensating victims 

After appearing to have encroached on matters within the realm of the executive, the Andhra Pradesh High Court did well to recall an earlier order that struck down the award of compensation to 70 Muslim young men who were wrongly arrested in connection with the 2007 Hyderabad Mecca Masjid blast case. The court seems to have realised that such awards are not expressly prohibited by law, and that the government needed no particular “legal basis” for paying compensation to citizens who have been the unfortunate victims of wrongful arrest and torture in criminal cases. Neither the fact of their arrest nor the proof of their innocence was in dispute. The actual perpetrators of the blasts had since been identified and were on trial. The withdrawal of the compensation was thus bad in law and effectively subverted the ends of justice. Admittedly, the court’s initial objection was technical: the victims, it said, were free to file a civil case for compensation. While it is true that mere acquittal or discharge from a case does not entitle an arrested person to compensation, this was not merely a case where the prosecution had failed to prove its charges in a court of law. It was not just that the guilt of the men was not proven, but also that their innocence was now established beyond doubt. When the State is free to compensate victims of accidents and natural calamities, why can it not do the same for those who have suffered injustice at the hands of its own police force? In the past, courts too have intervened to provide compensation to victims of State violence.

But the larger issue of accountability of police officials responsible for the wrongful arrest and torture of the innocent Muslim young men remains. Justice demands that the police officers who unthinkingly put innocent young men through such a harrowing time be made answerable. Torture is illegal and policemen who use cruel and unusual methods of interrogation must be prosecuted. The speed with which the police arrested Muslim men when the perpetrators of the blast were Hindutva sympathisers shows how deeply ingrained the automatic association of Muslims with terrorism is among law-enforcers. The award of compensation was just one small step toward correcting this and sensitising the police force, sections of which are vulnerable to communalisation. Indeed, the National Commission for Minorities had recommended that the compensation amount be recovered from the salaries of the policemen responsible for falsely implicating the young men. The A.P. government’s decision to award compensation must be established as a healthy precedent, and police officers who use torture to extract ‘confessions’ should be made to face civil and criminal liability.

Will this shame end?

My Letter to The Hindu dated 14-09-2013

Despite unrelenting efforts by voluntary organisations and laws to eradicate the practice, lifting human excreta with hands is still a reality in our nation. As early as 2007, the annual report of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination expressed serious concern over the deplorable conditions of manual scavengers in India. It is heartening to learn that manual scavenging will soon come to an end. As manual scavenging is an offshoot of untouchability, persons or institutions that employ manual scavengers should be booked under the SC, ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. Corporations must be made accountable and prosecuted for their failure to eliminate manual scavenging. The implementation of the law should include rehabilitation of manual scavengers. They should be trained for other livelihood options, given subsidy and concessional loans.

For your reading, The Hindu Editorial dated 13-09-2013

After long years of inaction, even a small step forward can appear as a lot. With Parliament passing the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, India appears to have at least acknowledged the continued existence of manual scavenging, including within government-run bodies. The law is a vast improvement on the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act of 1993, which saw no conviction in its 20-year history despite the widespread prevalence of the abominable practice. This time the focus is equally on rehabilitation of manual scavengers as on prohibition of the practice and punishment of the employers. Manual scavenging will continue so long as there are men and women poor and helpless enough to take it up. Without rehabilitation of those engaged in this dehumanising labour, manual scavenging will find ways to hide from the law, no matter how stringent the penal provisions for the employers. The new law recognises the problem as not just one of dry latrines, but as one of dealing with human waste. Irrespective of the nature of the latrines, manual scavengers have to work in extremely unhygienic conditions that put their health at serious risk.

Another improvement in the current legislation is the acknowledgment that local and railway authorities have been employers of manual scavengers. One reason the stringent provisions of the earlier law did not take effect was that the main violators of the law included government authorities. Local bodies trying to clear blocked sewer lines or the railways trying to clean soiled tracks at stations and toilets in trains have done little to introduce mechanisation. The current legislation sees protective gear and safety precautions for the workers as an alternative to mechanisation. For the purposes of the Act, those using protective gear and devices as may be notified by the Central government would not come under the definition of a “manual scavenger”. Verily, this is an escape clause for local and railway authorities to continue to deploy workers in manual scavenging. Even the present legislation would not have come about without the intervention of the judiciary. The Supreme Court has now asked the Centre and the States to provide a detailed list of manual scavengers who have been rehabilitated so far. Actually, funds allotted for their rehabilitation have been mostly unspent. The determination of the Centre and the States to rid India of manual scavenging can be gauged only from the results achieved on the ground, and not from the nature of the laws passed in Parliament.