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Orissa State Stands Indicted While apportioning blame in the Staines murder case, the Wadhwa panel says the JB Patnaik government not only failed to prevent the crime, it also falsified the facts. By Ruben Banerjee
This conclusion made last week by the Wadhwa Commission which was asked to probe into the incident could not have been more caustic. Having held a string of public hearings in Delhi and Bhubaneswar in which 52 witnesses were cross-examined, Justice D.P. Wadhwa, sitting judge of the Supreme Court, has exposed the skeletons in the cupboard. His findings -- running into 246 pages and divided into 18 sections -- are severely critical of the government headed by J.B. Patnaik, who was forced to resign after the incident. Justice Wadhwa has in fact recommended that responsibility be fixed on the administration and individual officers for obfuscating facts following the incident. The startling findings have left many red faces in their wake. "The Wadhwa Commission has clearly overstepped its brief," says Patnaik, who was the state chief minister when the Staines were burned alive on January 22-23 night. The Christian community was also quick to condemn the report. Says D.K. Mohanty, bishop of the Church of North India's Cuttack diocese: "The findings are disappointing, incomplete and deliberate." The BJP, however, heaved a sigh of relief. "The truth is always bitter," counters Shyamananda Mohapatra, state BJP spokesman. The findings effectively exonerated the party and the Bajrang Dal of complicity in the crime and of running an organised campaign against the minorities. On the contrary it pinned the Patnaik government to the mat. The police fir, it noted, was doctored and none of the five named in it had any connection with the crime. Even the 51 persons arrested immediately after the incident were found to be totally innocent. Most of them were RSS supporters and had been picked up at random and sent to jail for two months. Complicity in derailing a fair police investigation could go right up to the top of the administration, the commission said. Contrary to police claims, the fir was drawn up late in the night and not on the morning of the day after the crime. Moreover, it was established that the fir was filed only after Patnaik visited the scene. The stream of VIPs who visited Manoharpur after the killings also came in for flak. According to Justice Wadhwa, such visits only hampered investigations. Pointing out that a visiting member of Parliament picked up Staines' burnt watch at the crime scene and handed it to the commission, he suggests that VIP visits to such sites be drastically curtailed to prevent obstructions in investigation. It is clear from the commission's findings that the Patnaik administration did precious little even earlier. There were enough hints that "religious zealots" represented a big threat in the area and Staines himself had written in some magazines about such elements fomenting trouble. But with just three persons in charge of an entire district with a population of over 15 lakh, the intelligence network was unable to read the writing on the wall. "A responsive and efficient administration which has its ear to the ground could have prevented the carnage," concludes the commission. In order that the mistakes at Manoharpur are not repeated, the commission has made several recommendations. Among them are longer tenures for district magistrates and superintendents of police (SP) instead of arbitrary transfers. The Staines were killed at a time when the incumbent SP had been inexplicably transferred out after a brief stint and the new SP had yet to take up his post. In the course of the commission's hearings, the state Government too concurred with the view. The state's advocate-general even pledged on behalf of the Government to put in place a more rational transfer-posting policy. However, Bhubaneswar has since seen the posting and subsequent shunting out of two SPs. Transfers apart, the state Government has been asked to beef up its intelligence network by posting more personnel in communally sensitive districts. On its part too, the Central government in its Action Taken Report (ATR) has separately asked the Intelligence Bureau to play a more positive role in future and advised the media to report with caution on such incidents. The ball is clearly is in the state Government's court. Besides considering the recommendations of the commission, the immediate task before it is to identify the officials accused of lapses and take action against them. And, of course, to make an all-out effort to trace Dara Singh and arrest him. Having failed to prevent the grave crime, this is the only way the Government can restore some of its credibility. |
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 © Living Media India Ltd |
It is one of those rare cases
where the prosecutor himself runs the risk of being prosecuted. Seven months after
Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two sons were murdered in Manoharpur in
Orissa, it has emerged that though the prime accused Dara Singh masterminded the heinous
crime, a negligent state administration -- the principal accuser in the case -- is also to
be blamed for its failure to check the crime and for allowing matters to spin out of
control.