Click to play videoMumbai: As the 1993 blasts trial comes to an end, those affected in the blasts may be relieved that justice has finally been done. But here's another side to the story. Those affected in the terrible riots that rocked Mumbai three months prior to those blasts are still knocking on doors looking for justice.
Says a blast victim's brother, Vinayak Devrukhkar, "They say he (Sanjay Dutt) was shaking in the courtroom, and sweat was streaming down his face, but what about the tears that we have been shedding all these years?"
Devrukhkar feels no pity for Sanjay Dutt. His 11-year-old brother and 21-year-old sister died in the blast at Century Bazaar.
He's been following each death sentence, and each life imprisonment at the TADA court with satisfaction. Each day for the last few weeks, for Devrukhkar, has been a day of reckoning.
But while one contentious case is nearing closure, another seems to be going nowhere or at most only from pillar to post.
For another victim of the 1992 riots, Farooq Mapker, going to the courts all the time has almost become a way of life.
"For 14 years I have been doing the rounds of the courts my life has been destroyed," says he.
Mapker took a bullet at Hari Masjid in Wadala where then Sub-inspector Nikhil Kapse killed six people in unprovoked firing.
A witness to the firing, eight cases were immediately slapped on to Mapker and he is still trying to get rid of them.
“The blast victims have got justice, what about us?” Mapker asks.
Just like Mapker, convicts at the TADA court have often asked Judge Kode through the trial why they were being punished when those who died the 1992 riots are still unavenged?
A question that seems to be valid considering the Srikrishna Commission clearly indicted several prominent policemen and politicians in the riots.
Activists say the complete lack of punitive action in the 1992 riots suggests a dangerous trend that there is no equality in the justice system - justice offered to one - denied to another.
Srikrishna Commission Counsel for Riot Victims Niloufer Bhagwat says, "The results of the report have been willfully ignored."
Mapker adds, “If I have to, I will go to courts for another five years, to get Kapse and to get justice.”
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