AA Edit | Sterlite probe: Spare no one

The J. Jayalalithaa death probe report was so full of Poes Garden intrigues and pointing of fingers at people in the charmed inner circle that it may have attracted an outsized share of eyeballs as sensational news flowed out of Tamil Nadu.

Another report was tabled in the Assembly on the same day that should open our eyes to how we tend to treat people so very differently - of how common people may be considered expendable while the poor health and the five-star treatment given to a prominent politician, who was larger than life in the context of Tamil Nadu’s Dravidian politics, was the subject of an extended investigation.

The Justice Aruna Jagadeesan Commission, which went into the police opening fire on protesters against the Sterlite copper factory in Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu on May 22, 2018, has held all the policemen and bureaucrats involved in the decision guilty. She has called for criminal action to be taken on the Collector, three Tahsildars and a host of police officials. Her contention is that  indiscriminate police firing was a deliberate act meant to harm or kill the demonstrators.

The collating of facts of the firing revealed facts that were obvious soon after the incident too. Policemen were taking up prone firing positions to aim directly at demonstrators rather than shoot at their feet after firing in the air first as a warning, which is standard operating procedure for law keeping forces dealing with agitations and law & order situations. That as many as 13 persons died and more than 100 injured amply demonstrates the nature of the police operation to quell the protests.

A few top bureaucrats like the Collector, the IG and Superintendent of Police may be in the crosshairs of an inquiry. But it is mostly the policemen from the ranks and minor officials who will end up paying the price. What must, however, be probed thoroughly is how far from the top did the orders come to open fire since this was no spontaneous combustion of public anger against a polluting industry on a particular day so much as a slow burning issue involving thousands of people over years in the industrial town.

Will any probe be brave enough to investigate and pinpoint from where the order came - Chennai or perhaps New Delhi? Any brushing of the issue under the carpet would mean we would be surrendering once again to a system of governance that is loaded against the common man.