Gujarat riot murderer wants a pardon due to loss of vision. Who cares?
A convicted murderer seeking leniency on the grounds that his eyesight is failing, where is the logic to that? Where is justice in the process? 97 people were killed in a brutal orgy of blood and hate and one of the key accused has the gall to appeal that his sentence be commuted. Babu Bajrangi or to call him by the name his parents gave him, Babubhai Patel has sought mercy from Gujarat governor Om Prakash Kohli, claiming that he is losing his eyesight. How ridiculous is that and what a travesty of justice it would be if the petition is even considered.
According to the news reported by The Indian Express - in a letter to the governor, Bajrangi has also claimed that he has developed several other illnesses over the past few years.
Who is Babu Bajrangi and why is he in jail?
Just to recap – one day after the burning of Coach S6 at Godhra, a mob of about 5,000 attacked Naroda Patiya area of Ahmedabad city on February 28, 2002. What followed came to be known as the "Naroda Patiya Massacre". The mob hacked, looted, stabbed and sexually assaulted and ran riot through the predominantly Muslim households in the area. There were public gang rapes and many people were simply burnt alive either individually or in groups. LPG cylinders were used to get the fires going. Burnt bodies were thrown in a dry well. Women and girls were sexually assaulted, raped and killed by burning or by stabbing. Babu Bajrangi was among those who supplied weapons and led the mob in its bloody bacchanals. The massacre lasted for more than ten hours.
On August 31, 2012, a special court convicted Bajrangi and 30 others for killing 97 people in Naroda Patiya. In Bajrangi’s case, the order stated, “Accused No 18 (Bajrangi) is convicted of the offence under section 302 (murder) read with Sec 149 of IPC and is sentenced to suffer rigorous imprisonment for remaining period of his natural life subject to remission or commutation at the instance of the government for sufficient reason only...”
Will this plea of failing eyesight, be the instance for the government to find sufficient reason to commute Babubhai Patel’s imprisonment?
Here is a transcript of what Ashish Khetan, then a journalist with Tehelka, now an AAP leader, recorded Babu Bajrangi saying on hidden camera:
Bajrangi: “Hacked, burnt, set on fire, many things were done... many... We believe in setting them on fire because these bastards say they don’t want to be cremated, they’re afraid of it, they say this and that will happen to them... I have just one wish... one last wish... Let me be sentenced to death... I don’t want to be incarcerated... I don’t care if I’m hanged... Give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura [a Muslim dominated area], where seven or eight lakh of these people stay... I will finish them off... Let a few more of them die... At least 25-50,000 should die...”
Now Babu Bajrangi seems to be singing a different tune... gone is his bluster and he has come up with the pathetic excuse of failing eyesight to seek mercy. Maybe he hopes that since there is now a brute majority government in power, even at the centre, led by the same man who was in charge of Gujarat in 2002 and who Babu Bajrangi claimed - once protected him, he feels that his chances are good for an acquittal. Maybe Bajrangi’s hope is that this BJP government at some point in time will find sufficient reason to set an old Bajrangi free.
After all does not "Indian culture" promote leniency and compassion; the 97 dead are well and truly dead so why bother with their justice, let the convict with failing eyesight see the light of freedom.