Volume 6, No. 3, March 2005

With the intensification of the people’s struggles and deepening of the crisis for the ruling classes, the state machinery and its various organs are unable to continue with their impartial or neutral masks and their anti-people and pro-ruling class character is gradually coming out ever more crudely. Shedding their ‘democratic’ and ‘neutral’ appearance they are openly coming in defence of their class interests. One such institution is the judiciary which is being projected by the ruling classes as an independent and neutral institution that can protect the rights of the people. While all the other organs of the state are already exposed we are seeing the increased role of the judiciary to give legitimacy to the rule of the exploitative ruling classes. The recent judgments by the highest court in the country will clearly tell us whom it is defending.

On January 20th, in the Shankar Guha Niyogi case, the Supreme Court acquitted all the accused except Paltan Malla who pulled the trigger to kill Niyogi while he was sleeping in his house on September 27, 14 years ago. The apex court has given life imprisonment to Mallah and acquitted Moolchand Sha, Gyan Prakash Mishra, Avdhesh Rai, Abhay Kumar Singh and Chandrakant Sha. It is a well established fact that all these accused are the powerful persons linked to industries such as Simplex, Kedia Distilleries, and the Bhilai Engineering Corporation. The motive behind this killing is also very plain and simple. It was his fight for the workers rights, notwithstanding his limitations, in the Bhilai region. The workers movement, then organized by Niyogi, was a threat to these local industrialists, hitting at their huge profits extracted from the ultra-cheap labour that made their production costs low. It is a serious blow to the family members, fellow activists of Niyogi and to all those who were patiently waiting for the last fourteen years hoping that justice would be done and the murders would be punished. They had so much faith in this judiciary that they kept the ashes of Niyogi to be immersed only after the culprits were punished. This judgement, like the numerous others before it, is yet another example showing that the struggling people cannot expect even an iota of justice from this judicial system.

In spite of his reformist methods of organizing workers and his deep-rooted economism, Shankar Guha Niyogi, through his CMM had built a strong workers union in the Chattisgarh area. He had organized the workers in this area and led some militant struggles against the industrialists who were earning massive wealth by exploiting these tribal workers. The issues the CMM had taken up ranged from the fight for basic facilities like water and sanitation to tree plantation drives and campaigns against deforestation. In 1990, it started a major agitation demanding living wages and reg-ularization of workers working on a cont-ractual basis in the 120 medium and small-scale industrial units in this Bhilai region.

The profit minded industrialists thriving in this area didn’t take these movements lightly and there were continuous attacks on the CMM activists to suppress the movement. Women workers were molested and threatened with rape, and many activists, including Niyogi received death threats. In early September 1991, a delegation of the CMM workers met the President of India and presented him with a memorandum signed by 50,000 workers protesting the attacks. It indicated a threat to him and other union leaders by industrialists in this area. Nothing was done. Finally on the night of September 27 1991, Shankar Guha Niyogi was shot dead as he lay asleep in his house.

The legal battle to punish the culprits went through many ups and downs. The sessions Judge found enough evidence against all the accused and the trial court sentenced them with the death penalty or life term and a fine of Rs 10 lakh each. In a reversal of judgment, the Madhya Pradesh High Court gave its judgment acquitting all the accused. And in the final judgment, after 14 years, the apex court ordered the life sentence only for one, the hired assassin Paltan Mallah, acquitting the industrialists who were, in fact, the main culprits that organised the murder.

In contrast, in another judgment, the Supreme Court has confirmed the death penalty to four poor farmers from Bihar holding them responsible for the retaliation action by the exploited masses against the oppression and violence unleashed on them by the exploitative feudal classes through their privately organized armies in connivance with the state administration. They are Veer Kunwar Paswan, Krishna Mochi, Dharu Sinh and Nanhe Lal are convicted for the killings at Bara village in Gaya district of Bihar in which 35 men belonging to upper caste families were killed. In another case the Supreme Court also confirmed the death penalty on Shobhit Chamar, a dalit landless labourer from Bhabua district. He is also accused in the killing of upper caste landowner. Are they criminals? Are they hired killers of Capitalists or Landlords or did they act to settle their personal scores? No they were neither! They are the heroes that have emerged from the ordinary masses. What they had done was not for their selfish interests but for society at large. Their real crime, in the eyes of the establishment, was their sympathy for the ongoing revolutionary movement.

The popular perception about Bihar is the images of Crime, Corruption, Caste wars and sensationalized criminal activities. Behind these popular perceptions there is a bitter class struggle for liberating not only Bihar but the entire country. The exploited masses are being organized under the leadership of revolutionary parties and are asserting their right for better life and livelihood. Shaken by this assertion of the exploited masses the landlords started organizing their private senas or armys to suppress the masses. These senas have been carrying out the most gruesome acts of violence against landless labourers and dalits. The massacres carried out by them became regular feature in the Bihar countryside. In Bihar-Jharkhand more than 200 massacres took place in which more than 1000 oppressed people have lost their lives. In all these massacres the state and the administration has not been a mere spectator, but provided all the logistic support to the landed mafia. In not even one killing have the landlords, or their henchmen, been sentecced by the courts. In the socio-economic context, the people of Bihar lost complete faith in the established order and did not believe that social and economic justice could be given to them through the existing judicial system.

In boldly reacting to the lawless acts of feudal landlords aggravated by state indifference, the condemned mass leaders did nothing more than what men of a heroic mould down the ages have done to respond to the cry of the oppressed and anguished humanity for justice.

The Bara action in which the four farmers are facing the death penalty, occurred on 12th February 1992. More than thousand people took part in this action. This violet retaliation of the masses had its roots in social oppression, economic deprivation and political failure leading to a search for a political alternative. The judiciary ignored this social reality and adopted a very narrow legalistic approach to the whole problem. All the accused in this case are poor persons who were picked up from among nearly a thousand peasants that had gathered in retaliatory protest against repeated acts of murder, arson, loot and rape let loose by the private army of landlords with the connivance of the local administration.

These peasant activists are part of the revolutionary masses who are waging a bold and relentless struggle against exploitation casteism and communalism as part of the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggles. They inspired the peasants enmasse to rise above caste and communal considerations and mobilized them in the struggle against the divisive policies of the jotedars and mahajans.

In this exploitative and unjust judicial system, the peasant activists and revolutionaries are treated as criminals and murderers and sent to the gallows. Whereas those poor peasants of the oppressed castes whose names figure in the FIR are portrayed as killers, those who are known anti-socials roam about freely, as do the capitalists who engage mercenaries to eliminate the trade union leaders. This is how the ‘independent’ and ‘impartial’ judiciary works in our country — to protect the interests of the poor peasants of the oppressed castes and classes against the ruling classes. True justice is in fact being meted out only in the people’s courts in areas of revolutionary influence.

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