The enquiry committee constituted by the non-Congress, non-BJP parties in Rajasthan has squarely held the BJP and Shiv Sena guilty of inciting communal riots in Phalodi town of Jodhpur district ..

At Phalodi, the committee came to know that 4 FIRs were registered in the police station in connection with the riots, but 16 out of the 18 persons arrested were from the minority community ... The enquiry revealed that it was the BJP and Shiv Sena who instigated communal riots in the town by propagating that the cattle heads being carried in a train were meant for slaughter ... (The annual cattle) fair was held from December 3 to 10, where 2,940 buffaloes and 96 camels were sold ... Traders from UP, Bihar and other states also come. The animals are allowed to be taken out of the state only after their medical check-up Railway authorities at the Phalodi station told the committee that this year the traders ... were given 40 wagons by the railways for December 20. On the day, by about 10 a m, the traders had got the cattle loaded on the wagons and an engine was already in place to pull the train when a crowd, led by Balkishan Thanvi, former MLA, squatted in front of the train ... Hundreds of people began to drag the animals out of the wagons. This process continued till 5 in the evening ..

... No quarrel took place at the time the crowd was dragging the animals out of the wagons. It began when the crowd turned its attention to the buffaloes ... tied near the madrasa situated close to the railway station. It was said that the police also attacked the madrasa ... The team also went to see the kiosks (of) poor shopkeepers gutted by fire ... The team concluded that the district administration allowed the BJP and Shiv Sena leaders to instigate riots in this otherwise peaceful region of Rajasthan. For more than 15 days, leaders of these two parties were spreading rumours that the cattle were meant for slaughter, but the administration took no notice. The intelligence machinery of both the centre and state badly failed.

The BJP and Shiv Sena are also guilty of conspiring against the livelihood of lakhs of herdsmen in the state. It will be noted that several official and non-official organisations of Rajasthan organise cattle fair in various parts of the state at different levels from village panchayat upto state, and at different intervals -- like every year, every six months or every three months. It is at these fairs that peasants sell or purchase cattle or draught animals.

These fairs were being organised even when the BJP was in power in the state, and its government had even formulated rules for the purpose. But now, if the BJP and Shiv Sena succeed in preventing the holding of such fairs, it would only kill the livelihood of the herdsmen and peasants who are already suffering from rising costs of living and declining prices of the commodities they produce. This will further push them into the arm of the  same moneylenders and usurers who support parties like the BJP. and other animals that were dragged out of the railway wagons and freed, were roaming in the area adjoining the Phalodi railway station. None of the so called defenders of bovine wealth had taken care to feed them or give them water. (The Committee noted) the helplessness of the ruling Congress party vis-a-vis the communal forces. None of the Congress leaders had the courage to condemn the communal riots and those who had instigated them ...

The committee has demanded that the entire episode be probed by a serving judge of the High Court. Other demands put forth by the committee are arrest of and punishment to Balkishan Thanvi and others who spread rumours, incited communal violence, arsoned the railway property and dragged the animals from wagons which amounts to looting the property of cattle traders; compensation to the people whose shops were set ablaze; compensation to the traders who have suffered losses ... (Source: Sanjay Madhav in The People's Democracy, 9 Jan., 2000)

Withdrawal of Meerut Riots, 1991Cases

Editorial, The Indian Express, 22 Dec., 99

Time is expected to heal all wounds. After the bout of communal blood letting that Meerut witnessed eight and a half years ago, the state of UP, in its magnanimity, has decided to acquit those accused in engineering the riots. Incredible as this sounds, it has justified the move "in larger public interest and communal harmony" ... In the eyes of the law, a murder remains a murder, even one committed in the distant past. In the eyes of the law, the murder of one person in an individual attack, or of several people in a riot, remain heinous crimes that deserves to be punished and socially condemned in the strongest possible terms.

Bringing justice to riot victims is a social imperative…Yet, in riot after riot, in inquiry after inquiry, justice has remained elusive. The cavalier fashion in which the BJP-Shiv Sena government treated the Srikrishna Report on the Bombay riots of 1992-93 is too well-known ... In case after case, whether it is the Bhagalpur riots of 1989 or the' Maliana riots involving the Public Armed Constabulary, the authorities have preferred to adopt the posture of the ostrich in dealing with them. Inquiries are instituted often merely to buy time ... Very few state governments have bothered to even table such reports before the Assembly ..

But the UP government has gone one step further. By withdrawing the case, it has in effect actually pardoned those behind the riots before the trials could even begin. What makes the action even more suspect is the fact that some of the accused were close to the BJP or are BJP functionaries themselves. This newspaper reported on Tuesday how one of the accused men went on record to state that he is a sincere party worker and was particularly close to the former UP chief minister. The state government, by withdrawing from the case, presented the indiciary with a fait accompli ...