The ... report ... has indeed turned out to be the bomb it was expected to be ... But few expected Mr. Justice B.N. Srikrishna to be so unequivocal in blaming the Shiv Sena. The Sena counsel were ever ready to admit that "Hindus" had indeed "retaliated" after January 8, 1993, provoked by the violence by Muslims in the first week of January. But who directed the "retaliation"? And was it, indeed, "retaliation"?

These questions were repeatedly posed to the policemen who deposed before the Commission. While all except a few avoided giving a straight answer their official records could not. The Commission has relied on these and on witnesses ... But when the Commission rejected the "Hindu backlash" theory and blamed the Sena for having blown the Radhabai Chawl incident out of proportion to arouse the feelings of Hindus, the Chief Minister, while tabling the report, expectedly spluttered with indignation ... But ... it was the Sena counsel who had blocked all discussion on the incident. The TADA court had just convicted 11 accused in the case, hence the Commission could not go into it, counsel declared. Thus the incident itself went totally unexamined.

Another (criticism) is about the "niggardly space"  allotted in the report to the March 12, 1993 serial bomb blasts. The Action Taken Report (ATR) describes the Commission's treatment of this "conspiracy to destroy the economic powerhouse of the country" as "frivolous and cursory".

Here again, the Sena is deliberately silent on the limited terms of reference it had assigned to the Commission with regard to the blasts and its own cavalier approach to them. The Commission was only to explore the common link, if any, between the riots and the blasts and find out if they were part of a common design. Having added these to the original terms of reference, the Sena-BJP Government did not produce any material despite repeated reminders by the Commission ...

The judge has concluded that the link between the riots and the blasts was one of cause and effect and they were not part of a common design. The blasts, he said, were planned in Dubai and executed mostly by Muslims seeking revenge for the riots, trained by Pakistan.

Indeed, even a cursory reading of the report makes it clear that the judge has not spared the Muslims. (He has described the) Babari Masjid: "A dilapidated structure ... as "a rallying point for Muslims" who saw the threat to it as a threat of their religion .. (He has) rejected the widely-held perception that the December 1992 police firing on the rioting Muslims was excessive. He has accepted the police explanation that the initial violence came from the Muslims, that rioting mobs make difficult targets and firing under attack is fraught with errors of judgement.

Significantly, he has accepted the Sena's contention that police were demoralised after the December riots. In fact, he lists as an immediate cause of the January 1993 riots the confusion among police over whether to shoot or not ... But ignoring all this, the Sena has kept up the chant that the report is "anti-Hindu". The Urdu press called for a 'jihad' ... thundered Mr. Joshi. Police produced before the Commission a newspaper which called once for `jihad', but ... police were not even permitted to file a chargesheet.

Mr. Thackeray's latest plaint is that he has been hanged without hearing. Yet another lie. The Commission issued him notice to appear before it, produce evidence and cross-examine witnesses to protect his reputation ... The 'Tiger' chose to send his counsel. (Source: The Hindu, 11 August, 1998)