The challenges thrown up for India, post-Godhra 2002, are fundamental. Are the politically powerful, even if they are organisers of mass murder and rape, immune from the law? The acknowledgement of a crime is the essential foundation on which victims begin the process of healing. In Gujarat, victims have been denied even that recognition.

The absence of any signs of remorse from the perpetrators has reduced what was a premeditated and gruesome carnage into a sorry spectacle. Every few months we are jolted by newspaper headlines and "breaking news" on television screens. For a few hours or a few days we are reminded once again of the carnage that was, but the neo-fascist functionary remains unrelenting, unrepentant. Gujarat continues to function as if it lives outside the writ and mandate of the Indian Constitution.

Official figures and police records reveal that of the 413 persons who were classified as ‘missing’ (bodies untraceable) after the 2002 carnage, the remains of 228 are still ‘not traced’. Victim survivors of the mass massacres, who filed missing person complaints with the local police in Anand, Mehsana, Ahmedabad and Panchmahal in 2002 and 2003, have said on oath that the remains of their lost relatives lie buried in illegal dumps or mass graves. Those mercilessly butchered were even denied the dignity of a decent burial.

Panchmahal was one of Gujarat’s many districts targeted by armed mobs between February 28 and March 3, 2002. Muslims of Pandharwada village were targeted for slaughter at two different locations on March 1, 2002 (CC, "Genocide-Gujarat 2002", was the first to document this massacre). Between March 2002 and December 2005, victim survivors of Pandharwada made oral and written applications to the deputy inspector general (DIG), Vadodara, the collector, Panchmahal, the deputy superintendent (DySP), Godhra, the deputy collector, Lunawada and the mamlatdar, Khanpur, urging that the remains of their lost ones be traced and returned. In December 2005, after nearly four years of frigid silence, they went digging for the remains themselves. They sought the media as an ally and Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) for moral and legal support.

On December 27, 2005 the relatives uncovered bodies of lost ones that had been dumped in the forest wasteland near the Paanam river outside Lunawada town. They approached the Gujarat High Court. The Gujarat High Court ordered the human remains to be sent for DNA testing and analysis to an independent laboratory in Hyderabad under strict supervision of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Justice CK Buch’s order observed that if after analysis even a single body remained unidentified, a fresh case existed and scope for a de novo qua or fresh investigation was made out.

The CBI submitted the analysis to the Gujarat High Court in May 2006. Victim survivors were denied a copy of this report despite repeated pleas while the Gujarat state accessed a copy immediately. On December 6, 2006, the state appeared to be in an unholy hurry to get the matter disposed of. The victim survivors, who had approached the court in the first place, were not given the report and hence had no chance to reply. Despite this, the report did become public. Samples from eight body remains appeared to match the DNA samples taken from relatives of the Pandharwada massacre victims while 11 body remains were still unidentified. The matter was taken up for final hearing just two days later.

Given the findings of the Hyderabad laboratory, there was clear scope for a fresh CBI investigation as observed by Justice Buch earlier. Predictably, the Gujarat government adamantly opposed the court’s ruling of December 29, 2005 while counsel for the CBI remained unmoved by the pleas of victim survivors a year later. Instead, the CBI indirectly supported the Gujarat government’s stand, a fact recorded by the judge in his oral order.

The advocate for the victim survivors argued cogently and at length that the entire matter of illegally dumping these bodies needed to be investigated afresh by the CBI.

In the year since the mass grave was found, the victim survivors and co-petitioners had filed 600 pages of affidavits to substantiate their claims. For example, it was pointed out that the skeletal remains of the son of petitioner, Ameenabehn Rasool, were found bearing tattered bits of the same clothes in which he had been killed. This indicated that the police had not followed post-mortem and other routine procedures. It was also pointed out that the Gujarat government’s bias was evident from the fact that while the unidentified remains of Godhra arson survivors were kept in the public morgue for five months (and public notices for identification sent out repeatedly), these victims from the Muslim minority were unceremoniously dumped in wastelands near the Paanam river within three days of their killing. A 250-acre Muslim graveyard in Lunawada town lies barely a few kilometres away.

State officials could have handed over the bodies, even if unidentified, to local clergy to perform the last rites. Not only was this not done, victim survivors and human rights defenders who have assisted the legal struggle since December 2005 have been hounded by the local police, with a false FIR (first information report) being made out against them. They have all had to seek anticipatory bail. The case is pending against them even today although the Gujarat High Court has stayed registration of the FIR.

Even after the DNA sampling has confirmed that eight of the body remains of the dead matched the survivors of the mass carnage in Pandharwada, the victims have been denied dignified burial rites.

Sadly, the struggle for justice in Gujarat has been reduced to a legal battle for constitutional governance by victim survivors and some civil society actors. The political class that chants the secularism mantra to win elections has not merely kept a discreet distance. When it comes to punishment of the guilty of 2002, the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre has chosen to forget its 2004 electoral promise. Do political considerations make it uncomfortable for them to play a part in the struggle for justice? Or, with the blood of past carnages on their own hands, do they sleep easier if the perpetrators remain unchallenged?