Caught in the Act

WE, INDIANS, SEEM to have internalised corruption in all shapes and forms. It barely registers on the popular radar, with every new disclosure of someone high up dipping in the public coffers until being dismissed with a collective shrug of the shoulders, and a murmur under the breath, “hum sub chor hain”. Or, better still, “is hamam mein sab nange hain”. If everyone is corrupt, merrily cutting moral and legal corners to make a quick buck, what is so surprising if a former Supreme Court judge is caught stealing taxes? In fact, you sympathise with him for being caught in the act. Many more get away defrauding the taxmen with far more audacious ways to pad up expenses to lessen the tax outgo. But the case that the Indian Express exposed the other day ought to have shocked ordinary citizens for the man who tried to hide over ₹ 1 crore in black money was none other than the former Supreme Court judge, Justice Arijit Pasayat. As deputy chairman of the Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money, Justice Pasayat’s remit was to recommend ways and means to end the menace of black money. And here, he himself was found trying to convert black money into white by passing it off as expenses. As the report said, he offered not a shred of evidence to support the claim about the highly exaggerated expenses. Instead of furnishing bills and invoices, he had merely transferred ₹ 1 crore from his own bank account to his daughter’s, believing that it would be enough to pull the wool over the eyes of the taxmen. It did not. When caught, he availed of the amnesty scheme and coughed up the tax dues of over ₹ 30 lakh to go legit under duress. In the normal course, the story should have caused… well, for want of a better expression, shock and awe. Unfortunately, our collective public conscience has become so coarsened by everyday tales of loot and plunder, greed and sleaze that nothing at all seems to shock us any longer. But the story about the black money commissar caught with a pile of his own black money warranted a follow-up about the irony of “setting a thief to catch a thief”.

YOU HAVE HEARD of the people approaching the police in search of justice. But things have come to such a sorry pass in the Maha Vikas Aghadi-ruled Maharashtra that the police itself feels obliged to approach the ruling politicians for justice. The other day, a friend told us about the plight of a constable who was apparently diddled out of ₹ 7 lakh by a conman on the promise of providing him a flat in a Navi Mumbai multistorey complex. When the promised flat did not materialise, the constable demanded his money back. But the conman flatly refused. Having taken care to keep the record of the payment, he sought to lodge an FIR against the conman, but no police station would register the case since the conman was an influential figure in the ruling party circles. Frustrated, on the advice of colleagues in the police, the poor constable knocked at the door of a Shiv Sena leader who is known to dispense instant justice from his perch at the Sena Bhawan in Dadar, Mumbai. Sure enough, the conman was now ready to cough up the money, but mind you, only a part of it, and that too in instalments. Why the Sena leader could not order the cops to register an FIR is not clear, but it seems the extra-legal approach of justice delivery has quite a few takers, particularly whenever the Sena finds itself in power in the state.

POLITICS BY TWEETS is set to get a further impetus in Congress now that the party has named Jairam Ramesh as its overall media in-charge. The cerebral Ramesh, with a mischievous sense of humour, whose one-liners uttered in private do not spare even the high and mighty in his own Congress, can be relied upon to sharpen the attack on the ruling dispensation in the coming days. But whether that would help add any electoral heft to the party, which seems to be in terminal decline under the Gandhis, remains a question. Politics has space for well-regarded professionals like Ramesh, but in the absence of a mass leader who has his finger on the public pulse, there is little they can do to revive the fortunes of the party. Scoring brownie points on social media platforms is not the answer to the woes of Congress. Releasing the party from the stranglehold of the Gandhis is. Here, even Ramesh is helpless, owing, as he does, his re-nomination to Rajya Sabha to them.

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