India: Hindu-Muslim Hate Crime to be Retried

In 2002, a Hindu mob attacked a bakery Gujarat and killed 14, including two Muslims who were burnt alive in ovens. A 2003 trial resulted in the acquittal of all 21 Hindus accused of participating in the violence but today a new trial may be in the works - and justice may finally be done.

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

"This case has been a kind of systematic failure of the Indian legal system," says Teesta Setalwad, a human rights activist who led the effort to get the case a second hearing. "This has been a symbol, hopefully, to revive the criminal justice system in India." In a country where prosecutors win violent criminal cases only 4 percent of the time, some dramatic reforms are required, Ms. Setalwad says. "In India, we have failed (in providing justice.) Trials take 10 years to finish. Witnesses turn hostile and change their testimony. The whole system needs to change."

The star witness, Zahira Shaikh, named 21 of the rioters directly involved in the murders of 11 members of her Muslim family as well as their 3 Hindu employees. But on May 17, 2003, she changed her testimony. Later, Ms. Shaikh told reporters that she had been threatened by a BJP state legislator, Madhu Srivastava, who had escorted her to the courthouse. "He told me, 'Think about what you have to do. If you don't, you will suffer,'" Ms. Shaikh later told India Today magazine. "I knew I had two options: to get justice for dead family members, or save those who were living."

There is a great deal of social stress in India over violence between Muslims and Hindus. If the Indian government proves unable to deliver justice, it will lose its legitimacy as a government for multiple religions or ethnicities. Thus, there is a great deal riding on this: not just justice for the victims and their families, but justice for Indian society as a whole.

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• Religious Intolerance & Bigotry