We have said it before and we say
it again. The assassination of ex Prime Minister Rajiv
Gandhi was wrong. It was wrong not because ex Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi was innocent of responsibility
for the war
crimes committed during the IPKF occupation of Tamil
Eelam.... The assassination of ex Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi was wrong because it was wrong to punish
without charge and without trial according to
law.
But, if that was wrong, then, as
we have said before, and we say again, the Chengalpattu
trial (of those accused of Rajiv Gandhi's
assassination) is worse because the Indian Government
seeks to give the appearance of punishing through a
'trial' which, in truth, is no trial at all.
As Dr. Norman
Baker's analysis shows, the investigation into the
Rajiv Gandhi assassination was biased from the very
commencement. But it was not only the investigation
that was biased. The so called 'trial' itself is being
directed to a pre ordained ending. It is being held
under the special Terrorism and Disruptive
Activities (Prevention) Act and not under the
normal law of the land. It is being held
without the normal procedural safeguards which
crystallise civilisation's substitute for private and
arbitrary vengeance.
The trial is being held in
secret, away from public scrutiny, and within the
precincts of a jail. Secrecy breeds abuse of due
process. Again unlike under the normal law of India,
'confessions' to a police officer of the rank of a
Superintendent of Police are made admissible under TADA
- and this in a country where torture by the police is
a 'routine' occurrence. A recent Amnesty International
Report concluded:
'' Police officers of all
ranks, and in some cases magistrates, doctors and
state officials, have conspired to conceal the truth
about torture, rape and death in custody and to
shield the guilty... Torture is also routinely used
during the interrogation of criminal suspects, even
those accused of the most petty offences.
...Political prisoners are often brutally tortured
and untold numbers have died as a result. The Indian
Government, while refusing access to international
organizations and failing to respond seriously to the
international human rights procedures of the UN, has
claimed that its legal system, free press and civil
liberties organizations are adequate to address human
rights violations. Sadly, this is not the
case.''
Under the notorious TADA
provisions, 'confessions' may not only be led in
evidence against those who allegedly made them, but in
addition, where a 'confession' implicates a co accused,
the Court is required to presume that such co accused
is guilty and the burden shifts to the co accused to
prove his innocence. These provisions of TADA
constitute a gross violation of the fundamental
principle of justice that every one shall be presumed
innocent until proven guilty by an impartial court
according to law. It is this principle which represents
civilised society's response to 'lynch law' which is no
law at all - and it is this principle which TADA
brazenly flouts.
But, again this is not all.
Whilst on the one hand the trial proceedings are
supposedly 'secret', and the Court has made order
excluding the press, on the other hand selective press
releases have been issued from time to time of the
prosecution case and the 'evidence' that the
prosecution proposes to lead at the trial. Trial by
press directed by a Government with a political axe to
grind, is no substitute for trial according to
internationally recognised rules of procedural
law.
The Chengalpattu secret trial has
all the features of a 'show trial' with a pre ordained
ending - features which invite comparison with the
infamous show trials of 1936 under Stalin's regime in
the then Soviet Union. The Indian Government is foolish
if it believes that it can use this secret trial as a
political weapon to stifle the national struggle of the
people of Tamil Eelam. It is the Indian Government and
its agencies which stand charged before the bar of
world opinion of making a mockery of the judicial
process by using it to further the Government's
political ends.
