Finally the criminal (Rao), has been cornered. A Delhi court ordered former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao to appear before it on September 30 to face charges against him in one lakh dollars Lakhubhai Pathak cheating case. Additional session judge Ajit Bharihoke rejected Rao’s request for dismissal on the grounds that there was no prima facie case against him. The judge held that there was a prima facie case against him. The former Indian Prime Minister will be tried on charges of cheating and criminal conspiracy. Rao’s co-accused Chandraswamy and Kailash Nath Agearwal are already in Delhi’s Tihar jail.

Voices are being raised in India that Rao deserved to be tried not only in connection with the Lakhubhai cheating case but also on several other counts. The Akali Dal (Badal) wants a trial for Rao’s complicity in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots when he was India’s home minister. The communist party (Marxist) and the communist party of India in a statement issued in Delhi said that Rao and his former ministerial col leagues were involved in scandals and scams worth Rs 50,000 crore. The par ties sought a speedy investigation in the Saint Kitts affair in which Rao’s name figures as one of many who forged documents to implicate the son of another former Prime Minister V.P. Singh in a false case.

Opinion against Rao had been building up quite for some time but he stuck to the posts of all India Congress Party’s President, thinking that he would somehow be saved. The Delhi judge’s or der sealed the Congress leader’s fate who had to quit disgracefully from the post. There are also reports in a section of the Indian media that a powerful section of Congress faction leaders had procured the support of Rajiv Gandhi’s widow for a parallel party setup. Rao thus was compelled to resign his position to preempt attempts at isolating him.

The WSN had been pleading all along in these columns that the financial wrongdoing was but a part of Rao’s record as a criminal. Much more remains to be uncovered. Particularly, the former prime minister’s orders to Punjab police officers to exterminate Sikh youths and other political dissenters, cry out for systematic investigation. The disposal of the so called unclaimed bodies in Amritsar district by the Punjab police is merely a tip of the vast iceberg of criminology. Did not a certain group of Punjab police officers tell the late chief minister Beant Singh a few months prior to his death that they were merely carrying out orders that emanated “from the top”? That lead needed to be followed in right earnest.

The Indian Supreme Court dubbed the disposal of 983 unclaimed bodies in Amritsar district as “worse than genocide” but the impression of its concern is not much shared by other leaders of public opinion in India. No media publication has either investigated the crimes or called for any punishment for the guilty. Thus it is only the judiciary which is behind the present campaign to bring to book the corrupt and the guilty, the judicial steam alone cannot take the country far in the absence of support from others, the media, the intelligentsia and the parliament. In any case, India’s so called democracy is on test. It will be judged on the basis of its concern for human rights. More specifically, the Indian state must prove this point by holding an open trial of men like Rao and K. P. S. Grill for the genocide of Sikhs in the past few years and now of Kashmiris. Otherwise, crime as a weapon of politics will remain embedded in India’s governmental system notwithstanding the trial or even a jail term for men like Rao.

A lot can also be said about the U.S. State Department’s policies and attitudes in the past towards developments in India. Praises were showered on known criminals like Rao and Rajiv Gandhi. The complaints of human rights violations were disposed of rather casually by the top U. S. administrators. Holders of such views could not in spire confidence of the public in retrospect. The top administration owes explanations as to why they could not detect wrongdoing and criminal activities of the Indian leaders and react accordingly.

 

Article extracted from this publication >>  September 25, 1996