Crime and (Non)-Punishment

SOROOR AHMED laments how some of the celebrities and high-ups commit crimes and are let off to go scot-free, and how caste, class and community contribute to this phenomenon.

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SOROOR AHMED

Published on

June 17, 2022

SOROOR AHMED laments how some of the celebrities and high-ups commit crimes and are let off to go scot-free, and how caste, class and community contribute to this phenomenon.

Yet another celebrity is caught with cocaine and then easily released. And once again it is the lesser mortal working under him who got into trouble and had to face the legal action.
Almost one year after the arrest of Rahul Mahajan and the death of Vivek Mitra, personal secretary of late Pramod Mahajan following an overdose of cocaine, former cricketer and TV expert till the recent World Cup cricket, Maninder Singh, was caught by the Delhi police and subsequently released on the grounds that he possessed only 1.5 gram drug which comes under the permissible limit.
The case involving Rahul Mahajan was really a serious one as one of his closest associates died while taking drug along with him in one of the highest security zones of the country – that is beside the residence of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee – yet ever since his release he is a least bothered man. The world now is fully aware as to how the Apollo Hospital tried to save the drug-addict Rahul by giving him a clean chit.
Rahul being the son of high-profile former BJP general secretary and former Union minister need not run from one court to another. He was released by the court as if he were totally innocent, got married, was in the news once again for beating his newly-wed wife, Shweta. Though wife-bashing is another serious violation of law yet no case was booked against him.
Though the mystery of Vivek’s death would never be solved the media too seems to have forgotten the case and nobody is pursuing it for obvious reasons. Had there been some body else the Press would not have put it on the back burner so soon.
Rahul is not the only VIP to get scot-free easily nor is Maninder the last person. There is a long list of ‘celebrities’ who have been let off easily after committing crime – running the vehicle over pavement dwellers in drunker condition, taking drugs, gun-running, smuggling women, etc. But the irony is that the people working under them are not so lucky. While junky Rahul Mahajan got away virtually untouched Sahil Zarru, alleged to be the supplier, had to bear the brunt for months. Now nobody knows where he is. In fact he was then framed in a totally unrelated case for violation of Wildlife Act.
In Maninder’s case too it was Nadeem Siddiqui who had to pay the price on the charge that he provided cocaine to the gentleman cricketer. Similarly the suppliers of gun to Sanjay Dutt in the 1993 have been found guilty and punished but Sanjay is still shooting film after film.
The BJP MP Babubhai Katara seems to be a much luckier person. Though the case against him is still continuing the media has come to his rescue in a big way. A couple of weeks after he was caught red-handed smuggling a woman and a young boy to Canada the police arrested a passport agent, Rashid, from Hyderabad. Soon after his arrest the media flashed the news that the ‘kingpin’ and the ‘mastermind’ in this case has been arrested – as if the MP was not the main accused. The whole story ran in such a way as if it was this lowly passport agent who prepared or rather forced the MP to go to Canada with the woman and a youth. In no other country of the world can an elected member of Parliament be so ‘powerless’, ‘helpless’ and ‘weak’ and buckled under the pressure of a certain passport agent living over a thousand of kilometres away from his home town. How can a passport agent be the kingpin and mastermind in this case?
Being an MP Katara never needed help of any passport agent and that too not of his own state Gujarat but of Andhra Pradesh. Besides, how can a lowly passport agent dare to approach the MP unless the latter himself got in touch with him? For the argument sake even if one accepts that Rashid approached the MP to take the woman and a youth to Canada, what was the duty of the law-maker of the country? Katara was supposed to inform the police and that would have been all.
The media never posed these uncomfortable questions for obvious reasons as Rashid does not come from a particular class of people. Instead it was the media who dubbed him as the kingpin in the whole episode.
The BJP has the reputation of defending all the acts legal or illegal, even before the court gives any ruling. This is the way pressure is put on the judiciary. Hours after Maninder Singh was arrested the former BJP MP, Kirti Azad, also an ex-cricketer, started questioning the role of the police. Why was he in such a hurry to jump into his favour?
It is not that all those having right connections are let off easily. Much depend on the caste, class or community to which he or she belongs. For example, Lalu Prasad was the only chief minister in power who had to resign his post and go to jail, not once but five times. It was only after a decade long legal battle that the court acquitted him in Rs 42 lakh disproportionate asset case. Despite this the Bihar government had filed another case in this regard.
Similarly, Shibu Soren, a tribal leader, is the only serving Union Minister to be convicted on the charge of murder when there is no dearth of dreaded murderer going scot-free all over the country. What happened to Jayalalithaa in the corruption case is known to all. True, there have been some cases of former ministers getting convicted but none except the two mentioned above, while still in power.
Not to speak of celebrities alone, the discrimination is at the much lower-level too. Take the example of Ms Sadhna Srivastava, a judicial member of the Central Administrative Tribunal in Patna. She is still at large though the Chairman of the Child Labour Commission of Bihar on May 23 ordered initiation of prosecution proceedings against her for having a 12-year old child as a domestic-help. This order was given only after the repeated plea by the child labour activists and not by the chairman on his own. It needs to be mentioned that 12-year old Jagan is the lone witness to the mysterious murder of Additional General Manager of Tata Automobile, Suresh Mahto, at Sadhna’s house on May 21 afternoon. Mahto, according to the police, was thrown from the eighth floor of the Apartment in which Sadhna lives by two persons while she was in the flat.
True, it may take police many days to solve the mystery behind this bizarre incident yet what cannot be denied is the fact that there was a child labour working in a judge’s house. The entire world saw on the television how the young boy was explaining to the media persons as to how the criminals entered the house.
In contrast certain Mr Rashid, a deputy director rank officer of Hyderabad – once again the same name, but a different person, and the same city – was held and suspended from his service last November for keeping a young girl as a domestic-help even though the latter reportedly told media persons that she was brought by her mother on her own.