1. Home
2. Editorial

An accused transforms into 'whistle-blower'

By Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal. Dated: 7/4/2015 11:29:57 PM

In 2006, Jammu and Kashmir found itself caught in the grip of a major sex scandal with allegations against bureaucrats, politicians, security officials and other prominent citizens, leading to charge sheets and unprecedented slew of arrests of bigwigs. Major protests broke out across the state, primarily the Valley, and the scandal was the centre of attention for quite sometime, media offering appalling tidbits about of the who and what of the matter. Within 7 years, while majority of the cases were dropped at the charge-sheet level, all the other accused framed in the case were acquitted by a CBI court in Chandigarh as witnesses turned hostile. The prominent persons accused in the case were bailed within months of their arrest after the case began to fade away from the columns of newspapers and the minds of the people. The disinterest wasn't sudden but built up by the free for all wild assumptions with both media and public circles succumbing to temptations of rumour mongering. Within two months, unverified reports had pervaded the state with names being recklessly thrown in here and there by all and sundry, till one could just begin suspecting that every second person, man or woman, was a key component of the scandal. It is still not known whether this was by design or by the cavalier manner in which both media and collective civil society responded, but it helped to eventually make the various theories being thrown up unbelievable and the case itself a discredited one. If you can't convince them, confuse them, said Harry S, Truman. A natural fallout of such a scenario packed with confusion, as happened in 2006 soon after the infamous Kashmir sex scandal surfaced, is a gradual disinterest in a case that provoked huge outrage in the beginning.
The Lalit Modi scandal, not quite amusingly, may eventually fall into the same abyss from where it will finally be wiped off the public memory but for occasional interest generated by media and academics. The allegations of BJP ministers and other big guns having a finger in the Lalit Modi pie are too grave. A quick glance at the chronology of events would reveal that the finger of suspicion initially over union foreign minister Sushma Swaraj shifted towards Vasundhara Raje Scindia, based on information partly provided by Lalit Modi. Three weeks into the scam and Modi has turned himself into a loose cannon with assumptions, that remain unverified, voiced through media and twitter, linking himself to every political formation and every politician of reckoning. From Vasundhara Raje Scindia to Swaraj family, from Sharad Yadav to Gandhis, even the less likely assumption of Varun Gandhi mediating between Sonia Gandhi and Lalit Modi, whatever he says is newsy. However, in a manner similar to the Kashmir sex scam, the present pot boiler thriller has the capacity to blow over and ultimately lose its steam, if not handled properly.
What sets this present thriller apart from the Kashmir scam is that at the heart of the wild assumptions and theories in circulation is the man who is the main accused and the main beneficiary of the scam. Under the Indian legal system, he is an accused and a fugitive but has been turned into some kind of a whistle blower by the media for spilling beans. What he says and tweets so far makes a good copy and juicy enough for salability. The longevity of this bonanza of spree of wild assumptions, hitting out at everybody by dragging them within his radar, is being maintained by comparing Modi with the likes of Snowden. There could be no sadder day for Indian media, which chooses to dig up fresh brand of whistle blowers in an age when the traditional breed of whistle blowers is being hounded and harassed as is the case with Green Peace and Teesta Setalvad. At the same time by placing its bet wholly and solely on Lalit Modi's words, it has cleared the path of obfuscating any fair probe and for diluting the seriousness of the case. All this would simply end up in benefitting all the accused including Lalit Modi himself, who must be having the last laugh in all this for having successfully transformed himself from a villain to a hero.
Past is instructive how truth becomes a casualty when probes are buried beneath layers of confusing statements, rumours and magnified wild assumptions, often designed for someone's convenience. Let us hope the Lalit Modi scam, with all the serious charges of money laundering, match fixing and nexus with politicians involved, is not similarly lost in the din.