ANDERSON'S ARREST, RELEASE STAGE-MANAGED?

Warren Anderson, the then Chairman of Union Carbide Corp, was arrested on arrival at Bhopal airport at 10:10 AM on December 07, 1984, along with Keshub Mahindra, Chairman Union Carbide India Ltd and Vijay Kumar Gokhale, senior official of the company, under various sections of the IPC including 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), a non-bailable offence.

Moti Singh, the then District Collector of Bhopal has revealed that Chief Minister Arjun Singh had called him and the Superintendent of Police, Swaraj Puri, to his house in the morning, gave their arrival details and ordered that they be arrested on arrival. The duo then went to the airport, took them into custody and put them in Union Carbide guest house. RC Jain, who was Agriculture Secretary in the MP government at the time, has further revealed that Chief Secretary Brahma Swaroop came to know about the arrests only around 10:30 when the DC and the SP rushed into his office while he was holding his daily meeting of the core group on the Bhopal tragedy. In the meantime, Arjun Singh had left for an election rally which, according to what Swaroop shared with his colleagues, was also attended by Rajiv Gandhi.

As per Jain, during the meeting Swaroop received a call from Arjun Singh at around 11:30 AM, less than 90 minutes after Anderson had been arrested, who told him that Anderson had to be released. On being told that it was impossible to do so, he was asked "to find a way to do so". To cut the story short, a little after 2 PM, within four hours of being arrested, Anderson was not only released, with the IPC 304 charge deleted, on a $ 2000 bond furnished without appearing before a magistrate, he was even put on a government plane and escorted like a VIP to Delhi.

The official line given by Arjun Singh then, and reiterated by Pranab Mukherjee after 25 years, was that Anderson had to be sent out of Bhopal because people's tempers were running high and the law and order situation was getting out of hand. Could this have happened within one and a half hours of Anderson's quiet arrival about which virtually no one knew, and his detention in the Union Carbide guest house? Would those affected by the disaster have even known who Anderson was? Would the anger of the people not been directed more against the local management and even Keshub Mahindra? And who informed Arjun Singh that such a situation has erupted? If the DC and the SP who were personally asked by the CM to arrest Anderson were not aware of any such development then who was?

Furthermore, if there really was such a difficult situation -- an impossibility due to reasons explained above -- any democratic government, and that too in the middle of an election campaign, would have taken pains to assuage the pain and anger of the people by making a Anderson's arrest a very public affair. Also, if law and order in Bhopal was the real concern, Anderson should have been moved to another city in Madhya Pradesh or elsewhere in India and kept under arrest, not released so quickly.

So this whole story is not only an illogical lie and an afterthought to conceal the truth, it also proves beyond doubt that Arjun Singh did not order Anderson's release from an election rally on his own.

On of the theories doing the rounds is that Anderson was released so quickly because Rajiv Gandhi received a call from Ronald Regan and that since India was then a weak country that could not stand up to the pressure of the US, Rajiv had no choice. But there is something seriously wrong in this argument. Arjun Singh ordered Anderson's release in less than an hour and a half of his arrest. Rajiv Gandhi -- and this can be verified by media hounds -- was at an election rally somewhere in MP then. What are the odds that in this small window of time -- there were no mobile phones those days -- Anderson made a call to the US President who in turn made a call to Rajiv who, without asking for any inputs from the Foreign Ministry that he then headed or anyone else, took no more than a couple of minutes to ask Arjun Singh to release him?

Was, then, this whole arrest-release drama stage-managed by Rajiv Gandhi, with Arjun Singh its unsuspecting/willing executor? If you read on, this theory might appear to be not only possible but the only possible one.

Gordon Streeb, formed deputy chief of mission of US embassy in Delhi has said that Anderson sought and was given guarantee of safe return to the US, with the Indian government giving an assurance that no steps would be taken against him during his visit. After Anderson was arrested, Streed spoke to MK Rasgotra, his "chief interlocuter during this period" and was assured that India would honour its commitment. A report in the Pittsburg Post Gazette of December 7, 1984, link posted on Twitter and made available by Offstumped, confirms that the government had indeed promised a safe passage. It also says that Anderson's release on $2000 bond was secured after delicate negotiations between the US and Indian governments. Mysteriously, John Dean, the then US ambassador to India substantiates the argument that something serious was afoot. He says he was kept out of the loop and told to "stay out of this legal confrontation" (page 20/81). Note the expression.

How could there have been any "delicate negotiations" and "legal confrontation" between the governments of India and the US if Arjun Singh had acted on his own in ordering the release of Anderson within 90 minutes of his arrest, and reported completion to Rajiv Gandhi as reported in sections of the media? In fact, given the guarantees that the government of India had given, could Arjun Singh have even dared to arrest Anderson on his own and that too in the surreptitious manner that he did, involving no one other than the DC and SP of Bhopal city? This also means that there was either no call from Regan to Rajiv after the arrest or that Rajiv did not capitulate immediately, as some are suggesting. If indeed negotiations did place, as is evident they did, then what could have been the "confrontation" about? At that level, it had to be serious, really serious, either at the national or personal level. That means a deal was struck to let Anderson fly back.

There is undoubtedly something really dirty here that is being hidden. Anderson's arrest and freedom was manifestly traded over the dead and dying. But what it is that he was traded for?

Formed bureaucrat BS Raghavan believes that Rajiv bargained Anderson for Adil Shariyar, son of Muhammad Yunus who was "almost a part of the Indira Gandhi family, and a mentor of both Rajiv Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi". Shariyar was convicted by US court in 1982 on charges that included trying to blow up a ship, illegal possession of firearms and carrying them across State borders and drug trafficking, and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Yunus left no stone unturned to get his release but failed. But, miraculously, seven months after Anderson was released, Shahriyar was granted presidential pardon “as a goodwill gesture” and “for reasons of state”. Good will gesture to whom and what reasons of state for a person convicted of such dangerous crimes and with no connection to the state except the one mentioned above?

Anderson may have been traded for money too, in addition to Shahriyar. The money, big money, in any case did come in later.

Consider this: As per Free Lance Star of December 10, 1984, San Francisco attorney Melvin Belli had filed a $15 billion class action suit in the US on behalf of two Bhopal survivors. Lawyers from Washington were also preparing anther suit on behalf of the victims. Any government in the world would have assisted in efforts to ensure that the victims of what was clearly criminal negligence got the maximum possible compensation. But what did the Rajiv government do? It hurriedly passed the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster (Processing of Complaints) Act, effective from February 25, 1985 to ensure that exactly the opposite happened.

The Act denied victims the right to go to court individually and made the state their sole representative. And what did it do as their sole representative? It sold them cheap. Dirt cheap. To begin with, it filed a law suit for only $3 billion. In turn, the UCC proposed a settlement figure of $350 million. Nudged by the Supreme court -- something here too? -- an out of court settlement was reached in 1989, with the UCC agreeing to pay a paltry $ 475 million. This is less than 3% of just one claim that was filed in a US court and only 15% of what even the government had claimed.

The government quietly allowed the to UCC get away clean by paying a pittance, a humiliating $2000 to the family of the dead. That is, yes, Rs 30,000 only at the then average exchange rate of around Rs 15 a dollar. Anyone know why?

It appears that the mass massacre of the Sikhs in 1984 and the Bofors scam that felled Rajiv Gandhi's government are not the biggest skeletons resting in the cabinet. The Bhopal Gas tragedy is probably bigger than both combined. But given the manner in which many other scandals in the recent past have disappeared with almost no trace, only a die hard optimist will believe that this one will tumble out, involving as it does, the only Family of the country.
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BRAND IPL: LOTUS DESPITE MODI AND MUCK?

Can someone explain this? How can the IPL be the "finest new brand of global value", as Shekhar Gupta calls it, when it is also being alleged by him and many others in the same breath that that the one man who created it and ran it single-handedly for three seasons seemingly perfectly, is actually a villain who has corrupted the very innards of the organisation he heads?

Thanks to one tweet that felled the fox-clever, arrogant and avaricious Shashi Tharoor, Lalit Modi has instantly become a ruthless dictator, a corrupt administrator, a money launderer, an inveterate philanderer - add expletives of your choice without a care - who, through a complex web of financial crookery and dubious deals involving ownership of various teams, broadcasting rights etc, has enriched himself enormously and brought disrepute to the game. Suddenly, people have discovered that, thanks to the IPL, he owns a yacht, a fleet of S Class Mercedes cars, a jet and havelis, is into orgies, has been rubbing people the wrong way, has been running the show as his private empire etc. In short, what we are being told by and through the media is that the man needs to be thrown out immediately from his job as IPL commissioner. The sub-text is that once he goes all will be well again.

Lalit Modi would perhaps not have expected that exposing Shashi Tharoor would generate the kind of Tsunami it has. He should have known that the Congress party has always successfully used/bought/arm-twisted people into hastily burying any scam, no matter how big, if it even as much as singes a powerful Congress leader. Shashi Tharoor was no ordinary Congressman. He was one of the star members of the new club of 'educated' and elitist Indians that Rahul Gandhi was crafting to get himself projected by the English media as the Great New And Only Hope for India, before the 2014 general elections .

By stripping Tharoor of the veneer that had made him very popular among English-speaking Indians and revealing his ugly, dishonest innards that were indistinguishable from those of the many dehati thieves that our flawed systems have thrown up as leaders, Lalit Modi committed an unpardonable crime. How could he dare to, when no else did, tell the world that Tharoor should actually be spelled 'Thugroor'?

It is nobody's case that Lalit Modi is a saint. By all available accounts - there is an avalanche now - particularly from those who proudly claimed, till that famous tweet, that Lalit Modi was "my friend", it appears that he did as much wrong as right as IPL commissioner. It is also being projected through selective leaks by India's infamous Raiders of the Income Tax Department that Modi is not the only one who stinks: the whole architecture does. Many team-owners and administrators, even cricket legends, who have been merrily enjoying the IPL windfall for three years are, we are being told, all guilty of sullying the 'fair' name of the game of cricket and that the rot is deep indeed.

In the middle of all this muck, we are also being shown a pristine lotus, the IPL brand, which we are being asked to unquestioningly accept is still a good product, an outstanding Indian global brand that we must be proud of. Is that possible? If the one guy who gave birth to it and has built it up as a one-man brand is the Devil himself, if the other administrators headed by the omniscient Sharad Pawar of many a 'fame', including the rot in the ministry he currently heads, if many of those who own IPL teams, are all dirty guys in the game to maximise their own earnings by every dubious instrument available, then is it possible to believe that the players who have been bought by them and are in their employ are not being used by them or others with the same objective?

How can we believe that there is no match fixing, that the 'integrity of the sport' has not been lost, if the rot is really as deep as is currently being made out to be?

Something does not strike one as being right here. Sure, a lot needs to be fixed in the IPL. But, either things are not as rotten as they appear now or, if they indeed are as bad, then one has to logically accept that the sport too has been fatally compromised. That very few are willing to accept. Which can only mean that it is a mean campaign that has been launched by the government solely to punish Modi for unmasking Tharoor and to politically weaken Sharad Pawar who is a painful thorn that cannot be removed by the Congress because the survival of the government in Maharashtra, even the Centre, depends on his considerable weight, pun intended. This may also be with a view to make Tharoor's crime look relatively benign so that he can be rehabilitated quickly.

Lalit Modi, despite massive pressure, has refused to resign as IPL commissioner. On April 26, a meeting of the governing council of the IPL has been called to remove him from the post. He has not only called the meeting illegal, as he says only he can call for it, but has also refused to attend it. To add fuel to the raging fire, he has launched a counter attack on, yes, Twitter again: "Wait for the ipl to finish - I will reveal the men who have tried to bring disrepute to the game and how we stopped them from doing it."

Modi, let us accept it, is no ordinary fly-by-night swindler or conman. He is proud of the product he has developed with a lot of hard work and also seems to have covered his flanks well. He probably had a fair idea that taking out Tharoor would unleash the might of the state against him. Which means he also calculated that, given the knowledge he has about every aspect of IPL and the men involved in it, at the end of it he would come out relatively unscathed and, more importantly, the brand would remain untarnished.

There is going to be serious egg on some faces over the next few days. But, there is hope that brand IPL will not only not take a hit but will also grow bigger and stronger. This hope has arisen not because of what people have been writing and speaking while keeping the brand distinct from Modi and others, but because of the manner in which Modi is taking on the state and its instruments, including the media, which suggests that he guarded at least the brand zealously.

If, however, everything been as putrid as the hysterical reaction to 'Thugroorgate' is making it out to be, then the muck is not going to go out with Modi. Then, no matter who replaces him, everything will, away from public gaze, slide back to where it was. And who knows, Tharoor the Mentor - fixer in plain language - might quietly get his ministership and IPL team back too.

Related reading: Shashi Tharoor: making a 'difference'
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ARE LAW ABIDING INDIANS SAFE IN INDIA?

India is enraged, and rightly so, at the claim of the Victorian Police Commissioner that Indian students are safer in Australia than in India. What happens in India does not entitle any other country to gloss over crimes committed against Indians living there. Particularly when such countries have an otherwise much lower crime rate. That having been said, can one deny that that safety of ordinary Indians in India is a serious issue to which scant attention has been paid by the state till now?

The Ruchika Gehrotra case is the latest in a series that has highlighted the brazen manner in which the rich and powerful, and those who represent the face of the state, can easily subvert the law and harass and hound those who do not have powerful connections, should they attempt to cross swords with them, no matter that they are right. Equally disturbing is the fact that even ordinary criminals can roam free if they grease the right palms of policemen and politicians.

As Kiran Bedi never tires of saying, the problem begins at the very first step of an aggrieved citizen's interaction with the police. Getting an FIR registered with the police can be a traumatising experience, and in many cases, it is not registered at all, for a host of reasons, one of which is to keep crime statistics artificially low. While that enables police officers to falsely claim that the law and order situation is good and that citizens are safe, it encourages criminals to keep committing more crimes, making ordinary Indians feel increasingly unsafe and cynical about the instruments of the state that are meant to do exactly the opposite.

About two years back, I had done a comparative analysis of statistics pertaining to the number and type of of prisoners in Indian and American prisons, and conviction rates. The startling findings showed that nearly all of those who run foul of the law in this country, and should find themselves in prison, simply get away. There are around one crore - yes the figure is right - criminals, big and small, who should be behind bars but are out there on the streets.

Such being the shocking state, can law abiding Indians be safe in India? Read on.
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A recent study for the Pew Centre for the States in the US, released on February 28, 2007 has revealed that more than 1 in 100 adult Americans were in prison at the start of 2008. The US also has the distinction of having the largest incarcerated population in the world, with 2,319,258 people behind bars.

As per figures released by the India’s National Crimes and Records Bureau (NCRB), India had just 3,58,368 inmates in jails across the country as on December 31, 2005. The US, with a population which is one fourth of India’s over 1.2 billion, has almost six and a half times as many citizens in jail! India beats hollow even 36 European countries which have a combined total of 1.8 million prisoners. Only one in approximately 3345 Indians is in prison.

We should be thumping our chests with pride at these startling figures which can easily be interpreted to prove that Indians are the most law abiding people in the world and are an astounding 30 times more so than Americans! Should India not be, therefore, the safest place to live in and a really liberal, mature and free democracy, to be looked up to and emulated by even the US? If we further consider that only 1,08,572 inmates, 30.3 percent of the total lodged in various Indian jails, are convicts, the picture should become rosier thrice over.

Just over one lakh convicts in a country of 1,20,000 lakhs! Dream figures that any nation would be proud of. Why, then, is there a hushed silence? Why is nobody, means nobody, talking about this distinction that should be making us all feel safer and taller?

A close examination tells a completely different story.

As per NCRB figures, in 2005, 2,37,076 inmates, a whopping 66.2 per cent of those in Indian jails, were under trial prisoners. Of these, 27.9 percent were charged with murder. Of the one lakh convicts, 50.8 per cent were undergoing life imprisonment.

Why so few prisoners and even fewer convicts in India? Is it because Indians are very law abiding? Are all the newspapers and TV channels which are screaming full every day about rapes, murders, burglaries, kidnappings, corruption, and as many other crimes as you can think of, getting it all wrong? Are they just sensationalizing stray incidents to make the very rosy picture look black?

A comparative analysis of conviction rates of a few countries done by Neeta Kulkarni, a blogger, is revealing. According to her, Japan has a conviction rate of 99.97 per cent, China 98 percent and Russia around 90 percent. The conviction rate in the US is between 65 to 80 percent. Even the UK, whose colonial legal system we have poorly copied, has an overall conviction rate of 74 percent!

As per former Punjab Police Chief KPS Gill, the overall conviction rate for all crimes in India is just 6.5 per cent, with the litigation process often extending to decades. More significantly, the conviction rates, under normal laws, for terrorist crimes in the regions afflicted by widespread terrorism would be less than 0.001 per cent, according to Gill. Even under TADA, the erstwhile anti terrorist law, the conviction rate was a horrifyingly low of less than 2 per cent.

Ironically, that low conviction rate was one of the main arguments used to do away with TADA and POTA. Now, under normal laws, terrorists have a 99.999 per cent chance of escaping conviction for waging war against the country. India sure is a safe place, not for the law abiding citizen but for the ruthless criminal who kills innocent people. Can anyone really argue with Gill when he says about the doing away of anti terror laws: “If the inefficiency and incompetence of India’s criminal justice system are to be accepted as an argument against the existence of specific laws, we would have to throw the entire book of criminal statutes into the dust bin”?

What do all these facts tell us? In India, nearly all of those who run foul of law and should actually find themselves in jail are simply getting away.

This happens at every step of the system. At the first stage itself, if we use the US figures as a benchmark, with an average conviction rate of 70 per cent, over 75 per cent of criminals get ‘weeded out’ by bribing completely corrupt Indian policemen who let them go without even creating a record of their crimes. Going by figures of those in jail in the US and the assumption that Indians are at least as law abiding as the Americans - and the system there is relatively free from corruption – it is safe to conclude that almost one crore Indians who should be in prison today are free, having paid the police to let them go!

Of the few whose crimes are reluctantly registered by the police, nearly 94 per cent get away at subsequent stages by either bribing their way through the system or getting lawyers to beat the hopelessly lax provisions of law and escape conviction. That leaves the microscopic few who actually get convicted for their crimes; more than half of these are those who have committed the really serious and not too bribe-friendly crimes that merit at least a life sentence. A large proportion of the remaining about 50,000 in jail will, I am sure, have been convicted for quite serious crimes like rape, attempt to murder, armed burglary etc, the type of crimes which are really difficult for the police to cover up.

Think again. One crore criminals, big and small, who should be in jail are roaming our streets fearless and free. How many of them will feel encouraged to commit more crimes is anybody’s guess. Are law abiding Indians safe? Is this country a safe place for the ordinary citizen who is not connected to those who matter or the one who does not have money to buy protection or justice?

Delhi Lieutenant Governor Tejinder Khanna was recently in the dock for saying that North Indians take pride in breaking the law. The quite damning figures and facts highlighted above reveal a very deep and almost terminal systemic failure of India’s police and justice system. What they tell is that the real law breakers that Khanna did not speak about are those who are supposed to be the custodians of law. And they go about this job with real pride and no remorse whatsoever.

Remember, some of the key players in the system, apart from the politicians, are from the elitist “steel frame” that the British had put in place. Yet, and perhaps that is why, no one talks about changing it for the better, even overhauling or doing away with it altogether. That is why little has improved since the British left 60 years ago. For milking more out of the system, however, there have been and will continue to be hundreds of truly creative ideas and jugaads.

Recently there was a side issue which did create a furore. In the US, against the overall figure of one in hundred, one in fifteen African American adults is in prison i.e. 6.7 percent of all African Americans are in jail. No one there is giving this huge disparity the kind of racial or communal tones that many in India are to the unreleased and politically motivated statistics of the Sachar committee on the comparative figures of Muslims in Indian prisons.

The figures are more than their population percentage but are not even close to those of African Americans. Yet, this has unleashed the predictable talk of anti Muslim bias etc, with the sole aim making petty political capital. Had someone analyzed this data along with the types of crimes for which Muslims are in jail and had it emerged that they beat the national average for, say, murders, rapes and other heinous crimes, I don’t think anyone would have gone around shouting that Muslims are all that.

In the US, they have put one in a hundred Americans in jail so that law abiding citizens can enjoy the fruits of freedom. That nation is not prepared to allow criminals and anti social elements to diminish the quality of life and the liberty of Americans. That is what good governance should be about. Here in India, good governance is not even a factor; petty politicking and corruption override almost everything else.

If things continue this way, the proportion of dangerous criminals roaming free in your neighbourhood may soon reach such levels that you and I may have to start openly paying protection money to them and even their uniformed brethren so that we are not harassed by competing elements earning their livelihood solely out of crime. Statistics suggest that crime may soon become the single largest employer. Those in the system will then become much richer than they are today. The parallel economy will also quietly become much, much bigger than it has ever been.

India will then truly be a great place to live in! At least for those who can afford to pay for their safety, guaranteed by criminals within the system and without!
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RUCHIKA CASE: CHILLING LESSON

In 1975, Nishant, a Bollywood masterpiece directed by Shyam Benegal, showed how the powerful elite could do anything they wanted in a feudal society, including abducting and exploiting wives of ordinary citizens, without any fear of the law. Little it seems has changed, despite education, awareness and modernisation. The new 'zamindars' of India have happily inherited that feudal mindset and become the new exploiters, not in remote villages but in India's modern cities.

As by now the whole of India knows, Ruchika Gehrotra, a 14 year old child, was not only molested by an Inspector General of Police, but was driven to suicide by the harassment that she and her family was subjected to by him because they chose to not keep their mouths shut and let him get away. Molester SPS Rathore, who effectively killed Ruchika and destroyed her family, not only continued to serve in the police but was even elevated to the rank of Director General of Police, Haryana, backed as he was by powerful politicians.

19 long years after the incident, Rathore, supported by feudal mindsets in the top echelons of many wings of the system, has walked off with a with a victorious smirk. Thanks to his 'zamindarni' lawyer wife and a judge who was more concerned about of the age of the accused than the offence committed by him, Rathore has been not only got just six months imprisonment and a Rs 1000 fine but has been granted bail too.

The Ruchika case is another of the innumerable examples of what the aam admi has to face whenever he crosses swords with any instrument of the state. In perhaps 99% cases, he chooses to keep quiet and bear the humiliation and harassment because there is nowhere else that he can go to, without facing the same, even worse, treatment. Our police, in particular, has an anachronistic colonial-feudal organisational structure that is tailor-made to enforce its writ through force and exploitation, right from the constable upwards. The higher the rank, the greater the protection and force available to an exploiter.

When someone asks for a bribe to do what he is paid to, you just pay up. When someone feels a minor up, you just keep shut. The price to be paid for taking the system on can be very high, even fatal, and the one who makes you pay that price does not think twice before making you pay it and then release a smile far worse than the dirty one Rathore sported on walking free. All colonial instruments of state, including the police, are above and superior to you. Democracy does not touch them. Worse, they insulate even elected political leaders from democracy and help them become the new colonial emperors. The king-slave equation continues unbroken.

It is not an individual police officer's crime that is involved in the Ruchika case; it is the relative status of the instruments of state and the ordinary citizen that is being disturbed by it. That is not acceptable. If the Maharaja of Patiala, as revealed by Diwan Jarmani Dass, could pick any girl/woman he liked on the street, if zamindars could do so too, if the British did it when they were here, then how can you and I question the right of the new royals of today to perpetuate that tradition? We have to be told that as graphically as possible, and as often as necessary, so that others do not even think about throwing a pebble into that exclusive pool.

That is why when a Ruchika decides to fight, the system closes ranks and fights back harder.

In Nishant, the villagers eventually mustered courage and slaughtered the zamindar and his family. In Ruchika's case too, thanks to the huge outcry, Rathore may get much harsher punishment than he has. But will this change the equation between the rulers and the ruled? Will it alter colonial-feudal mindsets? That will not happen till the whole architecture is replaced by a people's-up edifice.

Till that happens, notwithstanding what happens to Rathore, what do you think I will do if something similar were to happen to my daughter? Whatever I have to, to ensure that she does not lose the smile on her face, even if that helps the criminal gets away. That's the chilling lesson for me. If that makes me a coward and makes the system mock at my helplessness, so be it. It is the society that must feel ashamed, not me. Will you risk your child's life?
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MURDER MOST FOWL: ARUSHI WON'T JUST GO AWAY

The Arushi murder case keeps throwing up nasty surprises that all point to a massive cover-up operation in which the hands of both the CBI and the UP police are looking dirtier with each revelation.

It may be recalled that 14 year old Arushi, only child of Dr and Mrs Rajesh Talwar, and Hemraj, their servant, were murdered under most mysterious circumstances on May 15, 2008, in the Talwars' home in NOIDA.

Initially, Arushi's father was arrested for committing both the murders, with the UP police claiming that it had solved the case. It, however, failed to find any evidence to support its claim and the case was handed over to the CBI after a lot of hue and cry. On July 11, 2008, the CBI also announced with much fanfare to the nation that it had solved the case and that Arushi had been murdered by Krishna, Dr Talwar's assistant, Rajkumar, servant of Dr Durrani who was a friend of the Talwars, and Mandal, servant of another neighbour. Following that boast, however, the agency failed to make any worthwhile progress in the case, and soon enough admitted that it too had no proof against anyone. That is where the case stands now.

The latest twist in the seemingly never-ending chain of damning revelations is that the vaginal swab that was sent to the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) was not Arushi's at all, but was of an unidentifiable woman! Only the NOIDA police or someone with a motive who had "purchased" unfettered access to forensic evidence gathered by it could have switched the swab. The CBI has known about this for about eight months now, as per a news report.

Yet, instead of filing a case for destruction of evidence, it has formed a committee to look into the "lapse". Lapse? Without the swab, it simply cannot be proved that Arushi had been sexually assaulted. This so-called lapse is no less serious than the murder itself.

This is not the only instance of destruction of evidence that points towards the involvement of well informed and connected individuals. Apparently, both the police and the CBI did not find any incriminating evidence either from Arushi's bedroom, where she was killed, or from the terrace, where her servant Hemraj was found murdered. Surely, three drunk, semi-literate guys could not have been so smart as to destroy all evidence is so professional a manner.

I have written earlier in some detail about how this murder most fowl is a serious indictment of the investigative agencies. The latest development only reinforces that deduction. Arushi , it appears, is just not going to go away.

Does the latest development bring the needle of suspicion back to Arushi's father? Read what I had posted just after the CBI admitted that it had no proof against anyone.

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Just four days back, I had written that the CBI, which had taken over the sensational Arushi murder case and claimed with much fanfare on July 11, 2008, that it had solved the case, was unlikely to file a charge sheet against any of the three accused whom they had arrested. On September 4, Vijay Mandal was granted bail by a court on the ground that the CBI had no proof to name him as an accused.

Today, India’s premier investigative agency has surprised the nation by throwing in the towel. It has finally admitted that it has found no proof against anyone in the case. Worse, it has announced a reward of Rs1 lakh for anyone who gives them further information in the case.

Even when the CBI hid claimed on July 11 that it had solved the case with arrest of Krishna, Rajkumar and Vijay Mandal, there were serious doubts in my mind about its claims because some vital points had been ignored. They were as relevant on that date as they are today and merit being repeated here:

• Nothing heard by the Talwars. The CBI had stated on July 11 that they had physically opened the door to Arushi’s room and found that nothing could be heard from her parents’ bedroom with the AC running. It was also mentioned that upon being assaulted by the accused, Arushi tried to shout, but she had a bad throat. The trespass into Arushi’s bedroom was not done by an individual making a careful entry. Four men under the influence of liquor entered her room in the still of the night, manifestly with the intention of sexually exploiting her. In her room, they even had a fight, due to which, as per the CBI, Hemraj left the room in a huff. Whether the other three did assault her sexually or not before or after hitting her with a blunt weapon is not clear. But, it needs no intelligence to understand that four hot-headed drunk men would have made enough of a racket in Arushi’s room for quite a while. Dr and Mrs Talwar were not sedated. It is really difficult to believe that they just did not hear the commotion, if not the muted cry from the bad throat of Arushi. Yet, the CBI chose not to subject Dr Talwar to a narco test. That too despite one of his polygraph tests not yielding a satisfactory result.

• Blood stains on Rajkumar’s shirt. The CBI has obviously not found incriminating bloodstains on Rajkumar’s shirt that they had sent for analysis. The question is: what about the shirts of Krishna and Mandal? Krishna was, as per his relatives, sleeping with them in a small room all through the night. If he did manage to quietly slip out, how come when he came back, he changed his clothes and hid those that were bloodstained, yet undiscovered, without anyone getting to know about it? What about Mandal’s ‘murder’ clothes? Where are the clothes that Dr Talwar was wearing that night?

• Destruction of all forensic evidence. No incriminating forensic evidence at all was found by either the police or the CBI from Arushi’s bedroom and the terrace where Hemraj was killed. Were three drunk guys having no criminal background so smart that they destroyed it all after committing the crime? Were Dr and Mrs Talwar so foolish and ignorant that they allowed all and sundry to enter Arushi’s room the day after the murder and destroy such evidence?

• Where are the mobiles and the murder weapon? This question was relevant on July 11. But the CBI chose to ignore it then. It is unanswered even today, despite the ‘confessions’ and ‘leads’ obtained during the narco tests. Without them, the CBI will look as foolish as the NOIDA police did earlier, and has no case.

The way both the NOIDA police and the CBI have bungled this case points to a very fundamental malaise that has hollowed the core of India’s ‘elite’ civil services that includes the IPS. In case after case, the professional incompetence and lack of integrity of India’s police officers has been exposed. Yet, nothing happens to them. Heads never roll. All that happens is that the concerned officers are removed from public and media glare for a while by transferring them to another place. Soon all is forgotten. And such officers continue to rise in rank and are entrusted with even more responsibility!

In the Arushi case, while the concerned IPS officers were transferred, one has not heard of even that action being taken against Arun Kumar who, on July 11, claimed that the CBI had found the real murderers and had given a clean chit to Dr Rajesh Talwar, till then the prime accused, without subjecting him to narco analysis like the other accused were.

Be warned. This is the kind of material that may well land up heading the BSF, CRPF, CBI, IB, RAW, NSG, NSC and more. Is it a surprise that 61 years after Independence, these ‘elite’ police officers have not been able to effect any fundamental organisational and functional changes in a 19th century police set up put in place by a colonial power to subjugate its subjects? If anything, they have made things worse for ordinary citizens with blatant corruption at all levels and an arrogance that would have embarrassed even the British of the Raj.

There is no agency beyond the CBI that can question it for its failures. India’s politicians, who should have had the vision and the responsibility to set things right, have led from the front to corrupt this and other organisations by using them as private agencies for petty and partisan political and personal purposes. When the real rot is right at the very top, how can you expect integrity and honesty from those below?

The Arushi murder case stinks. Something horribly wrong has been and is being done with a disturbing nonchalance. One cannot help shake the feeling that a lot of money has something to do with the botching up of what should have been the one of simplest of cases to solve.

NARCO ANALYSIS: ANOTHER SORDID SCAM?

Dr S Malini, the forensic psychologist who made narco analysis tests famous after multi-crore stamp paper racketeer Abdul Karim Telgi was subjected to one in 2003-04, has been sacked by the Karnataka government for forging her birth details and falsely stating that she has Masters in Science degree instead of the MA (psychology) degree that she actually does. Also, despite holding a government job, she is working as a consulting specialist at a private hospital.

Dr Malini is not new to controversy. There have been complaints about her earlier too. In fact in December 2008, the Karnataka police had asked the government to dismiss her on grounds of being unsuitable for the job. The police had then alleged that her way of conducting narco tests was "unprofessional" and that she was willfully leaking details of the tests to the media even before they were given to the investigating officers. As per the police, she leaked information to TV channel Aaj Tak on the narco analysis on Fahad Ali, one of the two Al Badr men arrested in October 2006 by the Mysore police on charge of planning terror strikes in Mysore and Bangalore. Later she leaked to the same channel the CDs of narco analysis done on the brother of Shahid, arrested by the Andhra Pradesh police in connection with the terror attack in Hyderabad in 2005. Shahid was suspected to have been involved in the Indian Institute of Science attack in Bangalore in December 2005.

There is much more. When Dr Malini had coaxed a confession out of Telgi, the CBI had dismissed it as unreliable. Why? Probably because in the test he had named many senior politicians, including Sharad Pawar, as being neck-deep in the huge racket. But the same CBI went back to her when it took over the Arushi murder case from the police and asked her to carry out narco tests on Rajkumar, Krishna and Vijay Mandal. Based on the results of the tests, Arun Kumar, Joint Director in charge of the investigations, held a press conference and announced with great bravado that the three of them had killed Arushi and that the case had been solved.

With the same confidence with which NOIDA police had declared Arushi's father Dr Rajesh Talwar guilty of murdering her, the CBI exonerated him. That too without subjecting him to a narco test, despite the many unsolved riddles surrounding his activities on the night of the murder and later. Subsequently, the CBI had serious egg on its face when it failed to file a charge sheet against any of the three accused who had confessed during Dr Malini's narco test because no evidence could be found by the agency to back the narco report.

As per NDTV, nothing was revealed in the narco test on one of the accused Krishna. But after senior CBI officials landed up in Bangalore that very evening, the alleged confessions emerged. NDTV also says that in August last year, the CBI team probing the sister Abhaya murder told the court that Dr Malini's video CD of the narco analysis test was made at 6.20 am, which means that it was made at her home and not at the laboratory. The CBI also received a tampered CD instead of 3 original CDs. Based on this, a Kerala High Court judge said: "I have no doubt that the edited and manipulated CDs and report on Narco Analysis by Dr Malini may mislead the investigation."

No one has yet spoken about the narco test Dr Malini had carried out on millionaire Moninder Singh Pandher in the that shocking Nithari case where a number of children were sexually exploited and then killed and eaten over a period of more than a year. His answers were telecast on many channels and there was nothing in them to implicate him in any of those heinous acts. Even then, when I watched him answering questions during the test, I had that uncomfortable feeling that he was not fully in a trance. It appeared to me then that the required dosage of the truth serum had perhaps been erroneously not administered, due to which he was in control of his answers. At the end of it, when he got up, there was a peculiarly triumphant smile on his face that seemed to say that he had done it! Then of course, there was not even a whiff that something was amiss in the narco tests, so I had to reluctantly dismiss the doubts from my mind. Perhaps someone needs to look at that CD again.

Now, with Dr Malini's role and integrity under serious cloud, I cannot help but wonder whether the CBI's investigations into the Arushi and Nithari cases have been transparent. Manifestly rigged narco tests on three accused to wrongly blame them for Arushi's murder, no narco test on Dr Rajesh Talwar and probably a rigged narco test on Moninder Singh Pandher to exonerate him, do not generate the confidence that a professional investigative agencies efforts should. I am not saying that Dr Talwar and Pandher are guilty. But something does stink here.
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Readers may also read:
1. Arushi murder case: The CBI goofs up too!
2. Arushi case: A damning indictment of investigative agencies.

TERROR: FORGET POTA, EVEN POLICE NOT NEEDED!

For the last fours years and more, the nation has been told ad nauseum that there is no need for any separate 'draconian' law like the Prevention of Terrorist Acts(POTA) to fight the growing menace of terrorism. After every terror attack which claims some more innocent lives, politicians rush to assure increasingly cynical and despairing and angry Indians that the perpetrators of these 'cowardly acts' will not be spared and that they will be firmly dealt with under the prevailing law. You would naturally not expect them to admit in the same breath that so far there has not been a single conviction. This is the new definition of 'zero tolerance' to terror.

The greatest 'argument' against an anti-terror law has been that when POTA was in force earlier, terrorist attacks did not stop. This is topped by the shining red cherry that the attack on Parliament took place despite POTA. Mind you, this mindless logic has not been used just by committed politicians looking for any stray logic to support their political stance, honesty be damned. Even celebrated and suitably 'awarded' media personalities have been trying hard to make ordinary citizens swallow this line that only the pea-brained will - that too with great difficulty!

Political dishonesty can be flogged only up to a point. And that point has long been crossed. The Congress and other like-minded parties have belatedly realized that by continuing to con the nation for so long, they may actually have committed a major and costly political blunder. They have not only alienated a large chunk of their voters from the majority community but have also failed to win over the Muslims that they were trying so hard to.

Elections are around the corner. That is why the need of having a tough anti-terror law is now being spoken of again, after the government has slept through its full term. A few days back, Veerappa Moily of the Congress was the first to shock other Congress leaders, still spiritedly sticking to the old party line, when he spoke of the need having a new law to tackle terror. Then the PM himself said the same thing, but there were voices who opposed him, a political light weight. Now Rahul Gandhi has joined them, and all Congressmen are nodding their heads violently to make sure that he notices that they fully agree with him!

The National Security Advisor(NSA) has also gone to the US to study how well that country has organised its homeland security after 9/11, resulting in no major terror attack in the US after that. For years, the NSA did nothing except bloat the already overweight higher ranks of the police that, in the eyes of ordinary citizens, is hopelessly corrupt and unfriendly, and that has repeatedly failed to deliver. Now, when the term of the government is ending, what has prompted him to 'study ' the measures the US has put in place, when he knew all along what they were but did little other than promoting the petty interests of his cadre?

The United Nations and the United States have been repeatedly warning that India is losing the war on terror because structures vitally required to fight it are either not in place or are in disarray. Not only do terrorists waging war against the state enjoy the same benign system of justice that ordinary criminals face, there are other major gaps in the anti-terror framework like inadequate laws on terror financing, special investigative techniques like electronic surveillance and undercover operations, lack of witness protection programs and national database, and inadequacies in securing the borders.

Not only has there been no meaningful national debate on the subject, these reports have just been buried, without perhaps even a cursory reading, only because of the demands of vote bank politics. They are being dusted now, perfunctorily, when the government is about to go. Is the public is so gullible as to be fooled by these gimmicks?

But wait! In the Indian context, there might just be a twist in the tale, something that those in the West can probably not understand. Instead of putting in place a POTA type law again, India's politicians might surprise all suddenly by justifying not only the doing away of that 'anti-minority' measure but suggesting that even police is not required to fight the war on terror! With elections around the corner, that would almost the perfect step to mollify the minorities angered by 'fake' Batla House type of encounters carried out by a 'communal' police. Here are some revealing statistics that they can use to push through this path-breaking proposal.

As per a report in the Hindustan Times of September 28, 2008, for every square kilometre, Gurgaon has 65 per cent more policeman and 2.7 times more PCR vans, compared to Delhi. Yet, it has 51 per cent more robberies and 13 per cent more murders per lakh residents. Could there be more persuasive statistics to prove that crime is directly proportional to the the number of policemen available in an area? Ordinary citizens are obviously safer if there are no policemen around. Just about the perfect logic to remove policemen from all trouble spots like Jamia Nagar, for example!

When terrorists who kill innocent civilians and then enjoy watching the dead and dying on TV come to know that not only is there no danger of POTA, but that even the police has been removed, they will have a transformational change of heart. As a result, instead of bombs, they will go around quietly dropping flowers and fruits for the good citizens of this country! India will then be blessed with not just one but thousands of Munnabhais! And guess what, in due course it might even lead to the IPC and CrPC also being repealed since in over a hundred years, they have not been able to prevent murders, rapes etc from being committed.

Why hasn't anyone yet thought of this brilliant non-violent strategy that promises to defeat terrorism and get minority votes in one go? Come on guys, what are you afraid of? Give it a try...till the elections at least. At worst a few more ordinary, innocent Indians will die.
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Readers may like to read: Rushdie and Jinnah: whither Indian Muslims?

ARUSHI CASE: A DAMNING INDICTMENT OF INVESTIGATIVE AGENCIES

Just four days back, I had written that the CBI, which had taken over the sensational Arushi murder case and claimed with much fanfare on July 11, 2008, that it had solved the case, was unlikely to file a charge sheet against any of the three accused whom they had arrested. On September 4, Vijay Mandal was granted bail by a court on the ground that the CBI had no proof to name him as an accused.

Today, India’s premier investigative agency has surprised the nation by throwing in the towel. It has finally admitted that it has found no proof against anyone in the case. Worse, it has announced a reward of Rs1 lakh for anyone who gives them further information in the case.

Even when the CBI had claimed on July 11 that it had solved the case with arrest of Krishna, Rajkumar and Vijay Mandal, there were serious doubts in my mind about its claims because some vital points had been ignored. They were as relevant on that date as they are today and merit being repeated here:

• Nothing heard by the Talwars. The CBI had stated on July 11 that they had physically opened the door to Arushi’s room and found that nothing could be heard from her parents’ bedroom with the AC running. It was also mentioned that upon being assaulted by the accused, Arushi tried to shout, but she had a bad throat. The trespass into Arushi’s bedroom was not done by an individual making a careful entry. Four men under the influence of liquor entered her room in the still of the night, manifestly with the intention of sexually exploiting her. In her room, they even had a fight, due to which, as per the CBI, Hemraj left the room in a huff. Whether the other three did assault her sexually or not before or after hitting her with a blunt weapon is not clear. But, it needs no intelligence to understand that four hot-headed drunk men would have made enough of a racket in Arushi’s room for quite a while. Dr and Mrs Talwar were not sedated. It is really difficult to believe that they just did not hear the commotion, if not the muted cry from the bad throat of Arushi. Yet, the CBI chose not to subject Dr Talwar to a narco test. That too despite one of his polygraph tests not yielding a satisfactory result.

• Blood stains on Rajkumar’s shirt. The CBI has obviously not found incriminating bloodstains on Rajkumar’s shirt that they had sent for analysis. The question is: what about the shirts of Krishna and Mandal? Krishna was, as per his relatives, sleeping with them in a small room all through the night. If he did manage to quietly slip out, how come when he came back, he changed his clothes and hid those that were bloodstained, yet undiscovered, without anyone getting to know about it? What about Mandal’s ‘murder’ clothes? Where are the clothes that Dr Talwar was wearing that night?

• Destruction of all forensic evidence. No incriminating forensic evidence at all was found by either the police or the CBI from Arushi’s bedroom and the terrace where Hemraj was killed. Were three drunk guys having no criminal background so smart that they destroyed it all after committing the crime? Were Dr and Mrs Talwar so foolish and ignorant that they allowed all and sundry to enter Arushi’s room the day after the murder and destroy such evidence?

• Where are the mobiles and the murder weapon? This question was relevant on July 11. But the CBI chose to ignore it then. It is unanswered even today, despite the ‘confessions’ and ‘leads’ obtained during the narco tests. Without them, the CBI will look as foolish as the NOIDA police did earlier, and has no case.

The way both the NOIDA police and the CBI have bungled this case points to a very fundamental malaise that has hollowed the core of India’s ‘elite’ civil services that includes the IPS. In case after case, the professional incompetence and lack of integrity of India’s police officers has been exposed. Yet, nothing happens to them. Heads never roll. All that happens is that the concerned officers are removed from public and media glare for a while by transferring them to another place. Soon all is forgotten. And such officers continue to rise in rank and are entrusted with even more responsibility!

In the Arushi case, while the concerned IPS officers were transferred, one has not heard of action being taken even against Arun Kumar who, on July 11, claimed that the CBI had found the real murderers and had given a clean chit to Dr Rajesh Talwar, till then the prime accused, without subjecting him to narco analysis like the other accused were.

Be warned. This is the kind of material that may well land up heading the BSF, CRPF, CBI, IB, RAW, NSG, NSC and more. Is it a surprise that 61 years after Independence, these ‘elite’ police officers have not been able to effect any fundamental organisational and functional changes in a 19th century police set up put in place by a colonial power to subjugate its subjects? If anything, they have made things worse for ordinary citizens with blatant corruption at all levels and an arrogance that would have embarrassed even the British of the Raj.

There is no agency beyond the CBI that can question it for its failures. India’s politicians, who should have had the vision and the responsibility to set things right, have led from the front to corrupt this and other organisations by using them as private agencies for petty and partisan political and personal purposes. When the real rot is right at the very top, how can you expect integrity and honesty from those below?

The Arushi murder case stinks. Something horribly wrong has been and is being done with a disturbing nonchalance. One cannot help shake the feeling that a lot of money has something to do with the botching up of what should have been the one of simplest of cases to solve.

ARUSHI MURDER CASE: THE CBI GOOFS UP TOO!

100 days after it took charge of investigations into the sensation Arushi Hemraj murder case, India’s premier investigative agency, the CBI, has serious egg on its face.

To briefly recapitulate, 14 year old Arushi Talwar of NOIDA was murdered on May 15, 2008 in her bedroom. A couple of days later, the body of her domestic help, Hemraj, was also recovered from the terrace of the flat. Both had been killed on the same day. Both were hit by a blunt weapon and also had their throats slit.

Initially, the NOIDA police which was investigating the case had confidently claimed that Arushi was murdered by her own father, Dr Rajesh Talwar, who had also killed Hemraj. It also claimed that he had confessed. Subsequently, however, it back tracked completely saying that no evidence had been found against him. There was then much criticism of the manner in which senior police officers had quite insensitively handled the issue and blamed Dr Talwar. As a result, all senior officers involved in the investigation were summarily transferred and the case was handed over to the CBI.

The CBI began investigations with much fanfare in a seemingly professional manner. It soon arrested Krishna, Dr Talwar’s assistant, and Rajkumar, servant of Dr Durrani, friend of the Talwars. Later, Vijay Mandal, the servant of a neighbour was also arrested. They were subjected to polygraph tests and narco analysis, during which Krishna and Rajkumar ‘confessed’ that they had committed both the murders along with Mandal.

The CBI also seized a blood-stained shirt from the room of Rajkumar and gave the impression that he was wearing that shirt at the time of the crime. But, despite all the tests and the confessions, it could not trace either the murder weapon or the mobile phones of Arushi and Hemraj which were allegedly taken by Rajkumar and Krishna respectively and destroyed. Simultaneously, the CBI all but absolved Dr Talwar of any involvement in the twin murders, as a result of which he was released from custody on July 12, 2008.

With gaping holes still visible in the CBI’s theory, the Joint Director in charge of the investigations, Arun Kumar, announced at a press conference on July 11 that the case had been solved. Much in a manner reminiscent of the infamous press conference of the NOIDA police, he exonerated Dr Talwar with the same confidence that the Meerut Range IG had found him guilty, and declared that the three guys mentioned above were the real killers. A few days later, the retiring Director of CBI also claimed that the case had been fully solved.

Even at that time, I had serious doubts about the CBI’s claims because a few vital pieces of the puzzle were just not falling into place. But, I gave the CBI the benefit of doubt much against my elementary commonsense, on the ground that despite these odd pieces, the CBI must have got it right enough to make the claim.

Today, the CBI’s case has manifestly begun to fall apart. Today, a local Ghaziabad court granted bail to Vijay Mandal on the ground that the CBI did not have any proof to name him as an accused. A couple of days back, the agency had admitted that it had made no progress in terms of material evidence. All that it had after months of investigation were the confessions made during narco analysis which are not admissible as evidence. So, it was trying to get one of the accused to turn approver. It has obviously failed to do that too.

The main points which bothered me then and still do, are:

• Nothing heard by the Talwars. The CBI had stated on July 11 that they had physically opened the door to Arushi’s room and found that nothing could be heard from her parents’ bedroom with the AC running. It was also mentioned that upon being assaulted by the accused, Arushi tried to shout, but she had a bad throat. The trespass into Arushi’s bedroom was not done by an individual making a careful entry. Four men under the influence of liquor entered her room in the still of the night, manifestly with the intention of sexually exploiting her. In her room, they even had a fight, due to which, as per the CBI, Hemraj left the room in a huff. Whether the other three did assault her sexually or not before or after hitting her with a blunt weapon is not clear. But, it needs no intelligence to understand that four hot-headed drunk men would have made enough of a racket in Arushi’s room for quite a while. Dr and Mrs Talwar were not sedated. It is really difficult to believe that they just did not hear the commotion, if not the muted cry from the bad throat of Arushi. Yet, the CBI chose not to subject Dr Talwar to a narco test. That too despite one of his polygraph tests not yielding a satisfactory result.

• Blood stains on Rajkumar’s shirt. The CBI has obviously not found incriminating bloodstains on Rajkumar’s shirt that they had sent for analysis. The question is: what about the shirts of Krishna and Mandal? Krishna was, as per his relatives, sleeping with them in a small room all through the night. If he did manage to quietly slip out, how come when he came back, he changed his clothes and hid those that were bloodstained, yet undiscovered, without anyone getting to know about it? What about Mandal’s ‘murder’ clothes? Where are the clothes that Dr Talwar was wearing that night?

• Destruction of all forensic evidence. No incriminating forensic evidence at all was found by either the police or the CBI from Arushi’s bedroom and the terrace where Hemraj was killed. Were three drunk guys having no criminal background so smart that they destroyed it all after committing the crime? Were Dr and Mrs Talwar so foolish and ignorant that they allowed all and sundry to enter Arushi’s room the day after the murder and destroy such evidence?

• Where are the mobiles and the murder weapon? This question was relevant on July 11. But the CBI chose to ignore it then. It is unanswered even today, despite the ‘confessions’ and ‘leads’ obtained during the narco tests. Without them, the CBI will look as foolish as the NOIDA police did earlier, and has no case.

In the next couple of weeks, both Krishna an Rajkumar will have to be released if the CBI is not able to file a charge sheet against them. As things stand now, it is highly unlikely that it will be able to do so. It is indeed amazing that both the NOIDA police and the CBI have failed to solve this case, which actually should have been among the easiest to solve. Both have goofed up thoroughly, and both have been overly confident about their investigations and claims.

The fact that both investigative agencies have egg on their face points to three main possibilities. First, the real culprits are really smart guys who know what it takes to be a step ahead of the police. Two, some police officials were paid off during the initial investigations by somebody, a fact alluded to by UP police itself. Three, there is a serious professionalism deficit in the police and the CBI.

One also cannot shake the feeling that the whole case stinks. And that stench emanates from the integrity of the investigators, be it NOIDA police or the CBI.

Unfortunately, there is no agency beyond the CBI to look into every aspect of this sensational case. Even if there was one, the result might not have been very different. Unless the professional, motivational and integrity levels of individuals who man these organisations are addressed holistically and brought up to minimum acceptable levels, things are going to be just as they are. And, time and again ordinary killers are going to be made to look better than the tough, smart and thorough professionals that the investigators should be, but are not.

This post was also published in Bloggers' Park Mumbai Mirror and Bangalore Mirror.

NOT HONOUR KILLING BUT MURDER OF HONOUR

For the last one week, India has been gripped by a sensational double murder in NOIDA on the outskirts of Delhi. A 14 year old girl Arushi, the only child of dentist parents, and their 45 year old servant, Hemraj, were murdered under the most mysterious circumstances on May 15, 2008.

For one week, the local police displayed their famed ineptitude in failing to follow even the very basic rules of investigation. First, after a most perfunctory visit to the flat of Dr Rajesh Talwar, the police hastily declared Hemraj as the prime suspect and even announced a reward of Rs 20,000 to any one giving information about him. This, while the body of Hemraj was decomposing on the very terrace of the flat where the body of Arushi was found! The police simply did not bother to even look around, though bloodstains were there to be seen leading to the terrace whose door was locked. Even after Hemraj’s decomposed body was discovered after two days, they took a couple of more days to examine the closed clinic of Dr Talwar in the same premises!

Much can be written about the complete lack of professionalism in, and lackadaisical attitude of, the police which had earlier been exposed in the most horrifying Nithari killings NOIDA itself in which a businessman and his servant killed more than a dozen children over a period of more than one year after exploiting them sexually. The servant had, in fact, gone to the unbelievable extent of eating the flesh of some of his victims.

Dr Rajesh Talwar was finally arrested on May 23 by the police for murdering his only daughter and his servant. He was apparently having an extra marital affair with a colleague, Dr Anita Durrani. According to the police, his daughter Arushi was against this and had discussed it with the servant Hemraj because of which the two had come close to each other.

On the fateful night, Dr Talwar, who had already downed a couple of drinks, saw the two in a somewhat compromising position. On the pretext of talking to Hemraj, he took him to the terrace and killed him. He then came back and had some more whisky. It is not exactly clear what led him to kill his daughter after that. According to some accounts, he killed her because she threatened to expose him. Others say that when he confronted her about her relationship with Hemraj, she told him that he had no right to say anything as he himself was having an extra marital affair.

A few details about the minor Arushi. An MMS has been floating on the internet for over a year now in which this then 12 or 13 year old girl is shown getting out of her school uniform and being fondled by an unidentified man after she gets naked. India News has been showing part of this clip all this evening. May 24 was to be her birthday and a party to celebrate it had been planned by her, yes, at a pub.

This most foul murder of honour is being casually branded by some as one more case of ‘honour killing’, the likes of which have been taking place in the entire Indian sub continent for centuries. Far from it, the whole case raises some very disturbing questions. Is our educated urban society is any more progressive and liberated than the rural one where honour killings enjoy widespread societal support to this day? Are urban parents neglecting their children in their obsessive race to get richer faster? Are such parents themselves promoters of a permissive culture which they do not want to see their children become victims of? Do the parental rules of permissiveness still have the same uncompromising gender bias that was there say 50 years back?

It is easy to suggest that family values have broken down in India, on the basis of this horrifying double murder. Let us not pretend that 50 years back there was no sex and that there were great moral values all round. The morals, then and now, as shown by Dr Talwar, were and remain mainly for women. Men were, and continue to be, predators with an unquestionable right to hunt. Men can’t do it alone, without a ‘prey’. So, women have always been the other inescapable party to sex. But earlier, women worked overtime to ensure that no one got a whiff of what they were up to. Now, at least in some sections of urban society, they flaunt it, much like men do. A city provides women the shelter of anonymity as well as easy concealment from parents. Often even when parents come to know, they pretend not to.

But when it comes to male children, parents, as always, view such permissive activities indulgently and usually with pride! Their concern for their boys is mainly about the possibility of getting AIDS, not about character or morals. Similarly, extra marital affairs are not a new phenomenon. Only the openness about them is, again in some sections of urban society only. Here too, apart from a miniscule section of society, for men it remains some sort of a badge of honour while women continue to work overtime to hide their part.

The killing of Arushi by her father, clearly with the assistance/complicity of her mother, Nupur, chillingly highlights this hypocrisy and the double standards that have always defined mainstream societal moral values in India. Nupur, in classic fashion, has adjusted to and is living with the escapades of her husband. But, when it comes to her only daughter, she is as rigid and uncompromising as Dr Talwar is. And they both had manifestly no qualms about killing their only child.

This is no honour killing. This a most foul murder of honour. Rajesh and Nupur Talwar had little time for their daughter. If they were so concerned about the morals that expected from a girl child, then they should have known better than letting Arushi grow up on her own in the company of servants rather than theirs. As the MMS shows, Arushi was not only sexually active but was bold enough to be captured on film even before she entered her teens. With her working parents having little time for her and with her father openly engaging in extra marital affairs, there was really only one way Arushi was headed.

There are many Arushis and Dr Talwars out there. Fortunately, most of the Dr Talwars and their wives do not so gruesomely murder honour when their daughters hold up a mirror to them, like Arushi did. This mirror, not surprisingly, only a few can see and accept with full responsibility. The lesson for them is that the only ‘safe’ way is for them to lead their children by example and love and time.

Unfortunately, in this materially booming environment, time is the one commodity that urban, educated, working parents are not able to give to their children. And, despite all their awareness and modernity, there are still a few who will kill their girl child out of a sickening sense of honour while taking no responsibility whatsoever for the mess that they have created in the first place. Fortunately, such demented parents are really very few.

WHAT'S WITH HOUSE No D-5 - HOUSE OF HORRORS?

The coincidence is eerie. Two houses, one in NOIDA and the other in Gurgaon are in the limelight for very disturbing activities involving the use of knives on human bodies in a clandestine and criminal manner.

One year back, just as 2006 was drawing to a close, the police discovered perhaps the most horrific case of rape, murder and even cannibalization of dozens of very young boys and girls in house number D-5, Sector 31, NOIDA. Most of the victims were from poor families of village Nithari which is located right behind that now infamous house of corpses. They were lured unsuspectingly into the house by the domestic help, Surendar Kohli, who after raping them would dismember their bodies with kitchen knives, put them in polyethylene bags and throw them either in the drain in front of the house or in an unused area behind it. The owner of the house, Moninder Pandher, living alone, used to get call girls to the house and has recently been charged with the murder of at least one of them. The villagers, however, are convinced that he too was involved in the ghoulish killings but is being let off the hook because he has paid off even the CBI, just as he had paid NOIDA police earlier to look the other way for over a year.

On January 24, 2008, the police busted a kidney transplant racket running from a house with the very same number in DLF Phase 1 colony in Gurgaon. The racket, operated by a gang of several doctors, had been running for seven years from the basement of the house which had all the facilities of a hospital. The gang would lure poor labourers from UP and Bihar and would pay them Rs 50,000 to 1 lakh for removing their kidneys. In some cases, the kidneys would even be removed without their knowledge!

These kidneys would be transplanted to wealthy clients, mostly foreigners, who were charged Rs 15 to 20 lakhs for each kidney. At least 500 kidneys had been traded illegally till the racket was unearthed, not by Gurgaon police but by UP police on the complaint of a victim who was not satisfied with the amount paid to him! According to some of the employees nabbed from the house, local police officers used to visit the mastermind Dr Amit Kumar regularly, just as it used to happen in D-5, NOIDA. Is it any surprise, therefore, that Amit Kumar was tipped off about the raid and managed to escape? He has reportedly even fled the country as newer and more sensational revelations are emerging everyday, including the fact that this Dr Horror had been arrested four times earlier in different parts of the country.

When the Nithari killings surfaced, UP was being ruled by the Samajwadi Party. Some media luminaries with clear political affiliations had then focused on “the political dimension” of the case and tried to pin down the state government, the local MLA and the MP representing the constituency, while glossing over the systemic failure of the police which actually needed to be addressed. This time, Haryana is ruled by the Congress. There is, understandably, no effort to blame any local politician, even though the racket had been openly flourishing for seven years; cannot be, after being awarded by the Congress government at the Centre!

I had thought that by now numerologists would have come up with some explanations about the reasons behind the criminal activities bearing many similarities in two houses with identical numbers! It is surprising that no one has yet brought out how the number of the house might be an important element in understanding what has been going on.The number starts with a ‘D’. Coincidently, as per the Chaldean, Pythagorean and Indian systems, ‘D’ has a numeric value of 4 which, as per Indian numerology, is ruled by the shadowy planetary node Rahu. ‘5’ is ruled by Mercury and the total of D-5 comes to 9 which is ruled by Mars. Is it this specific combination of these three planets which has led to the use of knives on human bodies? Is it because of this combination that the activities have been criminal in nature, involving deceit and unfeeling cruelty? For all you know, in the Gurgaon house too, some poor labourers may have been killed to get both their kidneys. Sanjay B. Jumaani, are you listening?

I wonder if any of you reading this post anywhere in the world is aware of similar activities which have been carried out in a house bearing this number, at any point of time. Do take the trouble of sharing your knowledge. May be something startling may emerge. Perhaps that may help prevent some more crimes if, and that is a big one but worth examining, there is a definite correlation between numbers and crimes.

Do look around for at least one house with the number D-5. The effort might turn out to be worth a lot more than you think.