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ShareI will give you four dots at different places in India and ask you to join them. What picture do you get?
The first dot is in Lucknow, happy hunting ground of Mulayam Singh Yadav. The second is in Delhi where the CBI is being hauled over the coals by the Supreme Court in their Disproportionate Assets case.
There was our premier investigative agency asking the court's permission to withdraw the case against the Samajwadi Party chief, obviously because his party was now an ally of the UPA government at the Centre. Our apex court would have none of it, so the CBI was faced into the humiliating position of admitting that it was doing the government's bidding and now because of the SC's direction, reopening the case.
The third dot is in Ahmedabad where the SIT (Special Investigation Team) appointed by the Supreme Court (fourth dot, back in Delhi), is taking a new look at the Gujarat carnage of 2002. Its report has so far nailed three police officials (two of whom are absconding) and two ministers (both untraceable).
There may be a few more people -- cops, politicians, ministers -- that the report may have named, if so we will know soon. These seem like meagre pickings, considering over 2000 people were killed. But it's better than the number of people indicted so far, which was zero.
What is the picture that you now see? We are dealing with two different types of cases here, one of corruption, the other of violence and murder on a mass scale. Yet in neither has anyone been charged so far. No one that is, till the Supreme Court intervened.
This picture tells you how our national investigation agency has become a hand-maiden of the central government and how the police has become not just a hand-maiden, but also a partner in crime. That political interference of our policing agencies has gone so deep that not only have they stopped doing what they ought to be doing, but they are doing the opposite of what they are supposed to be doing. As a result, there issuspicion that even after the SC's directions, the job that will be done will be a shoddy one, resulting in either no convictions or the catching of only the small fish.
This is why it astonishes me when raucous voices are raised (usually those belonging to self-proclaimed 'iron men' like LK Advani) demanding the bringing back of draconian laws like POTA. The history of misuse of POTA is there for all to see: Jharkhand of all places arrested even more people than Jammu & Kashmir!
That many of those arrested were old men and women and even children added to the disgrace. Gujarat arrested 123 people of which 122 were Muslim when we all know that the violence was against Muslims. In Tamil Nadu the Jayalalitha government used POTA to settle political scores as the notorious Vaiko case attests.
A few days ago I took part in a panel discussion whose subject was the need to curtail civil liberties in order to fight terrorirsm.An eminent Mumbai lawyer proclaimed that he would willingly surrender his personal freedom in order to ensure greater public safety.
The moot question to me is, surrender it to whom? The police? The administration? The government? Each of these arms of the state is capable of misusing any extra power given to it. You might say -- as the lawyer did -- that you have nothing to hide, so you don't mind intelligence agencies snooping around your email or intercepting your calls, but will your innocence be a defence?
I remember even the Supreme Court during the dark days of the Emergency saying that truth was not a defence! In any case what is written or said is open to interpretation. So it comes down to who is doing the interpreting. You can shout your innocence till you're blue in the face but ultimately you will have to prove it.
The nation has fought long and hard for its freedom. Let's not surrender any part of it willingly. And if the state wants to take it away, let's not give an inch without a fight.
