Books

Compromised investigation agency

Who Owns the CBI by B.R. Lall; Manas Publications; Price: Rs.495; 338 pp

This is not the first time it is being said. But it needs reiteration. A gangrenous cancer rooted in official corruption continues to spread unchecked through the body politic, infecting its arms and various organs with a slow disabling toxin. This canker is manifesting itself in a geometrically multiplying number of atrocities — murder, rape, civil insurrection, caste violence, religious pogroms, brazen tax evasion and outrages against women and children among the thousand unnatural shocks — to which shining 21st century India is heir.

The child murders of Noida, the prosperous, new, post-liberalisation suburb of the national capital, are an inevitable outcome of this spreading malaise within the body politic. The most disturbing aspect of the open and continuous paedophile murders of as many as 30 children of dirt poor slum dwellers living on the fringes of this steel and glass city, is that for two years its police station refused to register complaints of missing children made by anguished parents residing in the neighbouring Nithari village. Poor villagers are too marginalised and powerless to worry about. Besides they can’t afford to pay mandatory bribes or issue threats which are the condition precedent of registering complaints in police stations across the country.

Following the almighty row which has broken out after discovery of body parts of dozens of children in the drains around Moninder Singh’s home near Nithari village — a row which is less rooted in indignation about the pernicious rot in the policing system than in the imminent assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh (although a suburb of Delhi, Noida is geographically situated across the Delhi state border in UP) — the case has been transferred from the compromised UP state police to the Union government’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). But though there is considerable cheering about investigations being taken away from the UP government and its notoriously corrupt police in particular, corruption has permeated so many government institutions that the honesty, if not capability, of the CBI to impartially investigate and prosecute this now politically sensitive case which has the potential to topple the incumbent Mulayam Singh Yadav government in Lucknow, is under suspicion.

Certainly author B. R. Lall, a member of the once-respected IPS (Indian Police Service) elite corps and former director general of police in the state of Haryana who served for two years as joint director of CBI (1994-96), doesn’t have much faith in the impartiality and integrity of the country’s premier crime and corruption investigation agency. In this commendably outspoken insider’s account of the cynical manipulation of the CBI by politicians of all ideological persuasions and complexions, Lall highlights the extent to which the agency has been suborned and converted into a willing handmaiden of politicians in seats of power in New Delhi.

Lall discovered that the much-vaunted CBI in which the lay public still continues to repose considerable faith, is "like any other department of the government, carrying out executive commands rather than working impartially and fearlessly upholding the law of the land," soon after he was deputed from the Haryana IPS cadre to the CBI as joint director to head the Anti-Corruption Headquarter (AC-HQ) Zone which "deals with the most important VIP and super VIP cases", on April 26, 1994.

Though now forgotten, the Jain Hawala Case which was registered on March 4,1995 against S.K. Jain, his brothers and 115 powerful politicians including the then prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao on the direction of the Supreme Court, was according to the author "the most serious attack on corruption ever mounted in this Republic". Inevitably efforts to scuttle the case began immediately given the high and mighty involved. In a 52-page chapter the author describes how the great hawala scam which came accidently to light following the arrest of one Afshak Lone, a Kashmiri terrorist, was systematically sabotaged by successive directors of the CBI.

Ex facie these hawala shenanigans might seem like an harmless activity designed to circumvent irrational foreign exchange controls imposed upon the hapless public for ideological reasons. Lall dismisses such naïve justifications often advanced by disclosing that during interrogation, S.K. Jain revealed that often foreign companies establishing power generation projects in India were encouraged to double project costs to balloon the kickbacks of politicians (typically 10 percent).

With Jain admitting to the CBI that his 3 percent share of the kickbacks amounted to Rs.90 crore for four projects (Uri Hydro Power, Dulhasti Hydro, Kawas Thermal and Durgapur Steel Plant modernisation), the amount generated as kickbacks from these four projects aggregated Rs.450 crore which was pocketed by sundry politicians including former prime ministers Narasimha Rao and Rajiv Gandhi, Capt. Satish Sharma and the then ubiquitous Italian businessman Ottavio Quatrocchi. Of course the price for allowing construction cost escalations to this massive extent was paid by the citizens of India in terms of higher costs per unit of power and steel and the transformation of India into a high cost economy, bemoans Lall.

Yet the burden of Lall’s lament is that it is the deeply-rooted culture of the over-hyped CBI to close ranks to protect the big fish and go hammer and tongs after minnows. Thus in the hawala case immediately after the names of prime minister Narasimha Rao and other prominent politicians emerged from the Jain diaries, operation scuttle was mounted by K. Vijaya Rama Rao (an Andhra Pradesh cadre police officer appointed by prime minister Rao in 1993) and continued by his successor Joginder Singh. In the 52 page chapter on the Jain Hawala Case, Lall explains in detail how the case against all 115 politicians named in the diaries was scuttled by the simple expedient of filing premature chargesheets unsupported by adequate evidence.

Follow-up action in terms of raids on the homes and offices of the accused to unearth disproportionate assets and intensive interrogation of politicians identified by the diary entries was neglected, indeed prohibited by successive CBI directors, anxious to please the people who appointed them to this exalted position. Therefore with no evidence to support the diary entries, unsurprisingly the Supreme Court threw out the flimsy chargesheets and acquitted all the accused — as it was expected to do.

Quite obviously the fundamental problem of the CBI is that it is controlled by every incumbent government which appoints its directors and joint directors who serve at its pleasure. In subsequent chapters the author suggests ways and means to reform the CBI and clean up the electoral system which encourages corruption and accumulation of unaccounted black money.

Who Owns the CBI is a brave, valuable, but depressing book which exposes and diagnoses the pervasive rot which has disabled the law enforcement and adjudication machinery. The author is a whistle blower who deserves the rich praise and gratitude of society for telling it as he saw it without hesitating to reveal names — the bane of most insider books penned by self-justifying retired politicians and bureaucrats. Everyone with reform of contemporary India’s cruel, uncaring and unjust law, order and justice systems on his mind, needs to read it.

Unwarranted modesty

Winged Friends by M.Y. Ghorpade; Karnartaka Seva Sangha; Price: Rs. 250; 195 pp

Murarirao Yeshwantrao Ghorpade is a respected name in Karnataka politics. Unlike the great majority of nondescripts who throng India’s political space, he stands out because of his extra-curricular activities. Ghorpade is a well-known naturalist, author, and photographer. In a country whose politicians are rarely well-lettered, Ghorpade is well, a rara avis. An alumnus of Bangalore’s St. Joseph’s College and Cambridge University, he was finance minister of Karnataka (1972-77) and a member of Parliament (1986-91). Currently a teacher at the Sandur Residential School (Karnataka) following his retirement from active politics, Ghorpade is also a highly acclaimed nature and wildlife photographer whose curriculum vitae lists a plethora of awards from photographic societies worldwide.

 Winged Friends is Ghorpade’s sixth book. His earlier works are proof of his scholarly mindset — ranging from history (The Grand Resistance), spirituality (Paramacharya of Kanchi), socio-economic development (Development Ethos and Experience) and nature (Sunlight and Shadows, his first book).

 The book under review is a collection of essays detailing the bird life of Ghorpade’s native Sandur Valley. Each essay deals with a group of birds commonly associated with each other: pigeons and doves, for instance, make up the first essay, while babblers, bulbuls and mynas are the focus of another. Ghorpade has also devoted a chapter to bird photography which provides basic instructions on how to get started as a birdlife photographer.

 Yet through the book, one is unsure what genre of reader the author had in mind when he composed it. Each essay begins with scientific information on an avian species: its physical characteristics, behaviour, feeding habits, and so on. Once in a way he delves into an anecdote. These are the most interesting sections for the lay reader, but Ghorpade cuts his anecdotes short and returns to objective observations.

 The most interesting chapter is the one on bird photography, where the author takes on the role of a narrator, describing vivid moments when he had to use a quick mind to capture some extraordinary snapshots. He recounts the time when he was finance minister of the state, and due to present his budget when someone reported a sighting of the Great Indian Horned Owl. The minister and his entourage inspected the nest, lodged in the cavity of a rock, and went about slowly constructing a ‘hide’, from where he could shoot the owl nurturing its young ones.

For the most part, however, the book avoids such rivetting details and serves as an amateur bird-watcher’s field guide. Therefore, Winged Friends is a slightly skewed composition — neither for the lay reader, nor for the knowledgeable bird-watcher. In this respect, it suffers when compared with ornithologist Salim Ali’s highly acclaimed The Book of Indian Birds.

 Still it has some ameliorative characteristics. Inevitably the colour photographs of several avian species are excellent and an invaluable aid to aspiring ornithologists. The pages are well designed and the text is mostly free of errors. Ghorpade is a good writer but unwarrantedly modest: he should have contemplated a larger canvas for this book. A new, more ambitious edition is likely to prove more successful.