A lower Indian court magistrate, Prem Kumar, has made former Indian prime minister Narasimha Rao a co accused and coconspirator in the one Jakh dollars bribe case, along with Chandraswami, now lodged in Delhi’s Tihar jail. Rao has been directed to appear in court on July 24 to answer the charge against him. The charge against Chandraswamy and Rao is that in 1987 they received one lakh dollars from Lakhu bhai Pathak, an N.R.I. businessman of the USA, in lieu of promise of a lucrative contract for the supply of newsprint.
Lakhu bhai in his statement before the magistrate last week said that the money was passed on to the god man in the presence of Rao in a New York hotel. Evidently businessman got neither the contract nor the return of his money, interestingly, the businessman made a complaint to the C.B.1., India’s premier investigating agency, in 1987. CBI did not pursue the case for more than nine years forcing the businessman to pursue private prosecution. Lakhu bhai said that Rao himself had assured him that he would get a lucrative contract but the promise was never redeemed.
This is not the only case in which Rao faces criminal charges. His name finds menu on in the Rs 133 crore urea import scandal, Another charge against Rao is that he managed to get political support from three members of Parliament belonging to the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha to tide over a motion of no confidence tabled by the opposition in 1993 in lieu of a payment of Rs 3 crore to the members. Not long ago, a Bombay share broker, Harshad Mehta, had openly alleged that he had paid to Rao Rs 1 crore as bribe while he was prime minister, Rao’s role in the St. Kitt’s case is also frequently being mentioned. Investigation in the above mentioned cases has been going on at a snail’s pace.
Rao’s case is not an isolated case of a politician being involved in crime and loot. In India similar, if not more grave charges, were leveled against the late Mrs. Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. A kickback in almost every trade and contract, whether internal or external, was considered a routine when Mrs. Gandhi was ruling India. It was openly alleged that the then prime minister had stashed away thousands crores of rupees in Swiss banks. Similar charges were made against Rajiv Gandhi. The only exception was V.P. Singh whose name was not dragged in unsavory controversies while he ruled the country as its prime minister.
Thus, the whole Indian polity was creeping under the weight of crime and corruption. It is wrong to believe that India’s prime ministers in recent years, except for Y.P. Singh, were involved only in financial scandals. They have been involved in crime in no small measure, each one of them enacted and sustained authoritarian, black laws and appointed fascist police chiefs who, in tum, killed thousands of political opponents of the ruling party in Punjab, Kashmir and the northeast Indian states. Expanse minister, Rao, is personally linked with this case as well as with the murders of numerous Sikh youths in Punjab by certain senior Punjab police officers at his behest. Again only V.P. Singh did not face any charges of financial corruption or crime as well, because during his years in office, he restrained police officers from killing people in fake encounters.
In these circumstances, one could clearly see a link between a prime minister’s adherence to democratic norms and his aboveboard conduct and the vice versa. As such, Rao’s involvement in cases of corruption goes hand in hand with his criminal acts in states like Punjab and Haryana. In fact, these criminal acts provided a patriotic shelter to the Indian prime ministers, including Rao, to cover their financial misdeeds, so much so, that Indian media and public in the country looked the other way lo misdeeds of likes of K.P.S. Gill in Punjab. The Indian system of financial corruption, the denial of human rights and the rule of oppressive laws and actions are all an integral part of the system. A genuine democracy means transparency in public life. There can be no denial of human rights in such a situation; there can also be no large scale corruption in such a system, either.
We have been repeatedly writing about the Indian prime ministers’ role in the political crimes in states like Punjab and Kashmir and a link with his financial corruption. We perceived Rao as an ordinary criminal while he was India’s prime minister. That was precisely when the US state department had been issuing excellent certificates to Rao as a liberalizer. Rao’s involvement in criminal cases now must come as a source of embarrassment to the US authorities who as late as a few weeks ago, had tried to prop up Rao to have a fresh lease as prime minister, The cases against Rao must give a jolt to the U.S. leadership as well, for they brought disgrace to the country’s international prestige. Someone must pay for the wrong assessments about India and its politicians and the system as a whole.
Article extracted from this publication >> July 10, 1996
