The nation’s conscience-keepers

We have to take that smile off his face, said Ruchika Gihrotra’s father with an unexpected flash of anger. And I agree.

Top Cop SPS Rathore, who got away by the aggressive use of police clout for 18 years, was finally tripped up by something he probably never gave a second thought to. His smile.

His victorious smirk after his laughable six-month sentence when he walked out of the courthouse on a wintry December morning outraged an entire nation and galvanized the media to take up cudgels against this sunglass-toting, high-placed  molester. It was déjà vu — like Manu Sharma smugly walking away victorious after the first Jessica Lal trial.

The media has had a mixed impact in its dual role of debating contentious issues and a clear chase for TRPs. But the breathless serialization of 26/11 apart, I have to admit that some of the causes the media has been driven by, and in turn fueled, make it the conscience of a nation.

There are very few who could turn away from the TV images of a grinning Rathore juxtaposed with Ruchika Gihrotra’s 14-year-old face with the bouffant haircut and fringe solemnly staring out of a passport photo.

And it doesn’t stop there — a TV show, which I normally detest for its strident interviews, did a quiet dialogue with the father and the Prakash parents and daughter who championed their family friends’ cause.

I am stirred to anger when quiet, beaten Mr Girhotra talks about his son who went missing for two months while the police detained and tortured the boy for no reason.

But this is India, and perhaps there was a reason — he was the brother of one of the victims, and the villain was one of their own, so on his instructions the law-keepers closed ranks. While the father went from station to station, he was given no information and left in the most dreadful uncertainty.

These same villains hounded the girl, her parents, her young brother Anshu, ensured her father lost his job and even got Ruchika expelled from school.

And as she was forced out of her tennis academy, her school, saw her brother in jail, the tragedy that she had inadvertently wrought on her family by merely walking into Rathore’s office three years ago, for being a victim, this isolated little girl, barely into her teens, took the way out some victims do — by taking responsibility for the crime, caving in to the villain, and choosing to fade away herself so she would not break any more people she loved.

She poisoned herself. Her father picked up his tortured son from the street some time later, and told him that his sister too had gone. Girhotra’s eyes well up as he explains that Anshu will not  speak any more about the events that ruined his young life and wants no part of this.

Ruchika’s father went underground to protect his family, and while dozens of people — policemen, bureaucrats, politicians, school principals — who were part of this complicity directly or otherwise kept quiet, their family friends, the Prakashs, bravely chased this issue at great cost for 19 years. They are vindicated now, but they didn’t know that then.

The media increasingly reminds us of what we choose to forget, and if viewership goes up with it, I guess that’s just the upside. TV channels recently brought to light the wounds of the Sikh riots on its 25th anniversary but I wonder why we had to wait for the TV channels to remind us of the hardening scabs.

Move on to the coverage of the Bhopal gas tragedy, also a quarter century ago, and the company’s initial settlement value of Rs 1500 for each Indian life. It’s a corporate thing, and its about money. We know.

About 20,000 children carry scars and birth defects from that time, and the famous picture of that glassy-eyed baby half buried in the sand will always be a painful symbol of that careless, apoplectic tragedy.

No one was responsible, we were a less privileged, less assertive nation then, with a confused value for human life, and we limped on like poor relatives sometimes do. Until today.

The planet fights back. Be afraid, you arrogant power mongers, while you twist the system to exploit the innocents.

For all those Ruchikas, Jessicas and many faceless unknowns, ripped up by the very hands who have sworn to protect them, let the media take its role as watchdog seriously.  And may its bite be worse than its bark.