Former chairman of the National Commission for Minorities Wajahat Habibullah today expressed his concern over incidents of targeted communal violence in the country, in which the police force had reportedly played a dubious role.
Delivering the fourth K P Singh Memorial Lecture at the Aligarh Muslim University, Habibullah attacked the partiality
of the police force and said that “disturbingly all cases of communal violence investigated by the National Commission for Minorities followed a trend of police complicity, wherein it had colluded not only with the dominant community but also with aggressive groups to perpetrate violence”.
“Existing provisions of the IPC have proved inadequate in addressing targeted violence in the country,” he said.
Habibullah said that in the year 1986 then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had himself taken the initiative in investigating the role of the police in the communal violence in Hashimpura in UP’s Meerut district, following the custodial death of 40 Muslim youths.
He pointed out that despite the then PM’s intervention the case still lingers on in the session courts and all the
accused policemen continued in regular service and many of them retired with honours.
Habibullah regretted that the country lost an opportunity of containing such targeted violence when the Communal and
Targeted Violence Prevention Bill was torpedoed in the last session of Parliament.
The most remarkable of the proposed legislation was that it held public servants accountable for their negligence or
wilful failure in controlling riots. This bill would have also given the right to the victims to be heard during the
procedure of trial and made more victim friendly including the provision of victim protection,” he added.
“The government and civil society at large overlooked the need to address the discrimination, exclusionary practices and insecurities faced by the Muslim community on a daily basis.
Muslim community is clueless with how to deal with open and certain discrimination,” he alleged.
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