Many FIRs' but culprits go scot-free

ahmedabad: with a vast majority of the firs lodged with the police referring to mobs, legal experts have expressed serious doubts about the real mass murderers of the recent riots ever being prosecuted, leave alone, held guilty of the heinous crimes. sources said investigations into the gruesome killings of 128 people in the naroda-patia and chamanpura areas of ahmedabad during the riots, could be given a turn with heavy pressure to replace section 302 (murder) in the fir in the latter case with sections 396, 397 and 398 of the ipc which relates to ''murder in dacoity''.legal experts believe this possible move may just give a leeway to the offenders and could tone down their offence. the meghaninagar police, investigating the chamanpura incident in which former congress mp ehsan jaffri was also killed, have arrested 18 people in the case. there are doubts too if the heavyweights named in the firs will ever be arrested. about the chamanpura case, the police say, "to start with, we had lodged the fir under section 302. but on questioning the witnesses it was found that there were incidents of dacoity too." but legal experts say while conviction in murder would automatically lead to a death sentence or life imprisonment, a conviction under sections of ''murder in dacoity'' concludes with death or imprisonment for life and fine or rigorous imprisonment for 10 years and a fine. in other words, the guilty can get away with a 10-year term that is not possible under ipc 302. says criminal lawyer bm gupta, "these are cases of brutal murder and cannot be scaled down to dacoity." police officials admit that they have been under pressure against arresting offenders or booking them under serious offences. joint commissioner of police m k tandon, however, said such talk of "replacing the sections is nonsense". riot victims may feel they are on the path to getting justice by having filed the fir. but as advocates helping some of the victims are realising, the police may have skilfully manipulated many of the firs to ensure that the accused go scot-free. all they have to do is accuse a faceless mob of the violence, effectively ensuring that the fir ends up as just another piece of paper. with no specific person accused, the police will not be able to make any arrests even if they want to. citizen''s initiative, a consortium of 28 leading ngos in the city, has collected a large number of, what are known as, ''omnibus firs'' where the name of the accused is given as "a mob of 10,000" or "an unruly mob". "you need to hold an identification parade based on the information given in the fir," says advocate bhushan oza, who is helping the consortium out. "the procedure has to be completed before taking a particular case to court. you can''t identify an accused for the first time in the court. the law does not allow this and there are judgments to this effect based on the 1985 riots." there are only a handful of firs in which the names of the accused have been mentioned and fewer where they''ve been booked for serious crimes like murder or attempt to murder. citizen''s initiative has circulated a large number of forms in the relief camps and affected areas to find out how many of the victims have actually gone ahead and filed firs or if they would like to file one if they haven''t yet. in the process, they have come across several victims who claim the firs filed "were not done as they would''ve liked them to have been". they have decided to approach ngos and start the entire exercise from scratch. the consortium has filed 57 firs so far, 35 of which are from the relief camps.