The 1993 bomb blasts trial lasted 12 years but two long-time observers tell Naresh Fernandes why it was more gripping than the seven-month-old Kasab case.
On July 31, 2007, after Judge PD Kode delivered the final sentences in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case, Rajesh Shah walked out of the Arthur Road jail with a sense of elation. It had been 14 years since charges had been filed in the case and the trial had dragged on for 12 years. Shah had become all too familiar with the stout window bars and white-washed walls of the courtroom that had been set up inside the jail especially for the hearings. As he stepped out of the steel gate that evening, Shah realised that he was unlikely to find himself behind the tall stone walls of the jail again. He recalled, “I felt relaxed.”
But since April 15 this year, Shah has found himself back in Arthur Road. The 47-year-old Shah has covered the courts for the Marathi daily Samna since 1992 and when the Kasab trial began, it was his job to report on the proceedings. He occasionally shares a bench with 52-year-old Sunil Shivdasani, a reporter with the Press Trust of India news agency, the only other Mumbai journalist who consistently covered the 1993 blasts trial from the time it began in June 1995.
In casual conversation, both Shah and Shivdasani say that they’re relieved that the Kasab trial isn’t likely to drag on anywhere as long as the 1993 proceedings. Most experts believe that the Kasab trial will end by early next year, at the latest. The bomb blasts trial, though, was the longest-running trial in Indian history and in the time Shivdasani spent covering it, he saw his two daughters pass through high school and graduate from college. Still, when the two veteran reporters get around to comparing the two trials at greater length, it’s clear that they seem almost nostalgic for their last spell in Arthur Road. They speak wistfully of the camaraderie they developed over the years with the court staff, the police and even the prisoners. It’s clear that they aren’t yearning merely for the warm sense of amity that seems to be missing in the newly renovated air-conditioned courtroom today. They’re less engaged by the Kasab trial because, simply put, it has failed to excite their instincts as legal reporters.
In the cluttered ecosystem of the modern newsroom, it isn’t hard to identify the legal reporter’s desk. In an age when almost all information can be summoned up with a push of a button (most often, the one that says “Google”), legal reporters still lean heavily on old-fashioned, cloth-bound files. The legal reporter’s computer is one most likely to be surrounded by a hillock of charge sheets, case papers and voluminous law books. Where other people see twisted sentences (such as this section of the Information Technology Act: “Where any law provides that any rule, regulation, order, bye-law, notification or any other matter shall be published in the Official Gazette, then, such requirement shall be deemed to have been satisfied if such rule, regulation, order, bye-law, notification or any other matter is published in the Official Gazette or Electronic Gazette”), legal reporters see the poetry of precision.
It’s a beat that attracts reporters with the expertise to speed-read hundreds of pages of legalese to hone in on the most relevant portions, the ability to turn legal jargon into regular English and the patience to sit through hours of uneventful hearings. Once cub reporters master these skills, though, they’re often hooked for the rest of their careers. “The legal beat is fascinating because it’s multidisciplinary,” said Anshika Mishra, an assistant editor with the Hindustan Times, who has reported on the courts since 2005. “It covers all aspects of a citizen’s life: can a woman have an abortion, the amount of water cuts, who should fix potholes. One can’t get bored of this beat. Every day there’s a new case – and a new challenge.”
That’s precisely the reason the Kasab trial seems less compelling for legal reporters than the 1993 blasts trial: it just doesn’t seem to present many challenges. To start with, the verdict in the Kasab case is unlikely to surprise anyone. “His crimes were seen on TV soon after he committed them and he’s confessed to them,” said Shah. “The public knows all the details of the plot.” Since Kasab has already confessed to his crimes, his trial sometimes seems like the authorities are going through the motions just for the record.
The bomb blasts case, on the other hand, was the result of a complex conspiracy in which 129 people were accused, 13,000 pages of evidence were presented and it involved 2,700 witnesses (684 of them appeared in court). Each day, new details of the plot would emerge when witnesses were examined and from the documents that were presented by the prosecution. For the reporters in court and for their readers, the story just kept developing.
The bomb blasts trial was held in Arthur Road jail, off Saat Rasta near Mahalaxmi station, mainly for convenience. Since so many people had been arrested for setting off the 13 blasts that left 257 Mumbaikars dead, transporting them from Arthur Road jail where they were being held to the courts in South Mumbai was a logistical nightmare for the police, who had to provide Black Marias and guards on each court date. The authorities decided that it would be much easier to convert one set of barracks in Arthur Road jail into a courtroom.
Journalists had to get special permission to cover the trial and once they were allowed in, many were contemptuous of the prisoners with whom they shared the room. “We thought they were Dawood’s people,” recalled Shivdasani. But as the months wore on, fewer reporters turned up regularly. The ones who did found themselves growing curious about the people accused of plotting India’s most devastating terrorist attack. “Every day we would see their grim faces,” Shivdasani said. “When their families would come to see them, their wives would be crying. Slowly, we began talking to them.” Though there were no restrictions on reporters speaking to the prisoners, these conversations could not be published.
Shivdasani found himself chatting frequently with several prisoners, including Sanjay Dutt, and occasionally shared the actor’s Marlboro cigarettes. Since there were limits on the number of times prisoners’ families could visit the jail each month, Shah sometimes agreed to carry parcels for them. A few times, Sunil Dutt asked the reporter to take his son prasad he’d brought from the Sai Baba temple in Shirdi.
The reporters also became familiar with lawyers on both sides. Ujwal Nikam, the public prosecutor in the bomb blasts case who is also leading the state’s case against Kasab, had great praise for both Shivdasani and Shah. “Sunil is very particular about the coverage,” Nikam said. “Rajesh is also very responsible. They both know how to keep confidences.”
When memories of the horror of the 1993 attacks faded as the decade wore on, some reporters covering the trial came to regard the people they saw in court every day as the victims of circumstance who had been compelled to commit terrible crimes because they’d been scorched by the anti-Muslim riots that had preceded the blasts. Shah noted that he seemed to spend more of his waking hours in Arthur Road jail than at home. “I would come in before 11 and stay with the accused until past six,” he said. “The only difference seemed to be that while they would sleep in jail, I would go home.”
Though public interest in the case dipped and rose, it never completely disappeared. The last day of sentencing received especially intense attention, because Sanjay Dutt’s fate hung in the balance. He received six years of rigorous imprisonment, though he later received bail.
Earlier this year, when the state had prepared its case against Kasab, it decided to reactivate the courtroom in Arthur Road jail mainly because of security considerations. It was deemed too dangerous to drive the Pakistani prisoner to court across town every day, so the one-storey barrack in which the bomb blasts proceedings were held was renovated to make it bomb proof. Journalists who have covered both trials have also noticed other changes. They’re frisked more rigorously (they even have to surrender their pens and only use ballpoint instruments offered by the authorities) and, to their great relief, the courtroom has been air-conditioned. The new security arrangements have forced them to change their eating habits. For the previous trial, they were allowed to bring their lunch dabbas into jail. Now, they leave them at a counter at the entrance and huddle into the cars of colleagues working with TV channels to eat.
This time around, though, no one seems able to see the chief accused man as anything but a villain. (On trial along with the gunman Ajmal Kasab are Fahim Ansari and Sabahuddin Ahmed Shabbir, alleged Lashkar-e-Taiba members who are said to have drawn maps that helped the Pakistani operatives to conduct the Mumbai operation.) Reporters aren’t allowed any contact with the prisoners, so they have only a limited sense of their personalities.
Even though judge ML Tahilyani is trying to keep the trial moving along as fast as he can, the predictability of his eventual judgement has made it difficult for many observers to maintain their interest in the trial. Even Kasab seems to have had enough of it. Reporters have seen him occasionally gesticulate to Nikam, moving his index finger over his throat like a knife. Said Shah, “He seems to be saying, ‘This is just a formality. Let’s just end it now.’”
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