Air of uncertainty
SEVERAL political players, big and small-time, kicked up enough political dust to reduce visibility to a few feet or, in this case, a few days. The biggest contribution came naturally from the formidable Ms Jayalalitha.

Unwise water dispute
THE water supply by Haryana to Delhi is neither a goodwill gesture nor a matter of inter-state politics.

Numbers game
THE craze for having small and special numbers on the number plates of one’s cars and motor cycles is all-consuming.

NATO’s BRAZEN AGGRESSION
by Inder Malhotra
JUST a fortnight ago most Indians — or Americans, for that matter — would have been unable to locate Kosovo on the map. Today, thanks to the arrogant, unlawful and unacceptable air strikes on the sovereign state of Yugoslavia, of which Kosovo is an integral part, the place has become the stormcentre of an international conflict and crisis more explosive and dangerous than any in Europe since the end of the second world war.

The halfway journey
by Hameeduddin Mamood
“THE defining moment” has passed into history, leaving its fragrance behind. Excepting Britain everyone in the world has felt buoyed by the psychological change in the relations between the August twins — India and Pakistan.

Renuka’s murder — where are the culprits?
YAMUNANAGAR: “ I have lost all hope of getting justice in my lifetime,” says Mrs Kamlesh Sharma, whose teen-aged daughter Renuka was brutally raped and strangulated to death more than three and a half years ago. In tatters and sitting dazed in her one-bed room house in Railway Colony, she blames the Haryana Police and the CBI alike for their failure to trace the rapists and assassins of her daughter.

Most hated person on earth
by Amardeep S. Dahiya
I HAVE never been a BIG BOSS in my life. Well, actually not even a small one. Probably for that reason I have at times envied and fancied them and have dreamed to become a BIG BOSS myself one day. Since I was a young graduate I have tried to ape and build in me the qualities of a BIG BOSS: arrogance, ruthlessness manipulativeness, indolence and hardheartedness on one hand and charm and energy on the other.

75 Years Ago

His Excellency’s aim
THAT we have correctly gauged His Excellency’s aim is conclusively shown by three facts. One is that although, as we have said, His Excellency’s action is undoubtedly constitutional, it is at best doubtful if it or the whole of it was absolutely necessary.

Air of uncertainty

SEVERAL political players, big and small-time, kicked up enough political dust to reduce visibility to a few feet or, in this case, a few days. The biggest contribution came naturally from the formidable Ms Jayalalitha. With subtle body language and strident demands she added to the brooding sense of uncertainty over the stability of the BJP-led government. The issue she chose to mount her attack is the sensitive dismissal of former Navy chief Vishnu Bhagwat, the controversy which the Congress is openly using to embarrass and censure the government. This added to the melodrama she was enacting. Is she preparing the ground to effect a realignment of forces? She left the question tantalisingly vague. By first agreeing to go by the majority opinion of the coordinating committee of the ruling alliance and then by totally ignoring it during her hour-long meeting with the Prime Minister, Ms Jayalalitha gave the impression of being peaceable. Within hours, however, she returned to her strident position, demanding the shifting of Mr George Fernandes from the Defence portfolio and even — laughably enough — asking for the reinstatement of the sacked Admiral. She crowned her visit by meeting Mrs Gandhi and describing it as a political earthquake.

In retrospect, it is possible that the tea party was her idea and Mr Subramanian Swamy was a willing host. The Bhagwat case came handy to send out several signals. The AIADMK leader is keen to proclaim that she is the old combative self and the weeks of silence was an exception; she is keen to retain her options with the Congress, even ready to revive the old arrangement of claiming a majority of Assembly seats and conceding a majority of Lok Sabha seats to that party and, finally, reminding the BJP of the importance of being Jayalalitha. It cannot be a coincidence that her visit to Delhi was preceded by hectic efforts by small parties to split the Biju Janata Dal, the Samata Party and even the Akali Dal. But Mrs Gandhi’s Calcutta statement ruling out the formation of a coalition government by pulling down the present one has put paid all those plans. Mr Vajpayee also helped by taking a firm line against dropping either Mr Fernandes or Finance Minister Sinha.

For all the brief storm she unleashed, it is nearly back to normal in Delhi and for the BJP-led alliance. Irrespective of what she told or did not tell the Prime Minister, the only negative fallout will be a further postponement of the Cabinet expansion. The government can still extract some benefit out of the media hype she caused. One of her demands is the formation of a joint parliamentary committee to go into the Bhagwat dismissal. It can now own the proposal, claiming that it is merely acting on the request of an important ally and end the logjam in the Lok Sabha. Anyway, its stonewalling the demand and the street fighter-like campaign by the Ministry of Defence combine to make it look like a guilty party. Nothing comes out of a JPC — and that is the experience — and it cannot be different this time.

Unwise water dispute

THE water supply by Haryana to Delhi is neither a goodwill gesture nor a matter of inter-state politics. Among the five elements that have been traditionally described as the basis for the sustenance of the world, one is water. Rivers are neither village wells, which are located at specific places, for the use of a limited number of members of the rural community, nor objects on which regional monopolistic rights should be allowed to prevail. Look at the Ganga and its journey from Gangotri to the sea. Crores of people benefit from its water throughout the year for purposes beginning with ceremonies at one's birth and ending into one's last rites. Irrigation and potability are such universal advantages as are taken for granted. Delhi is a tropical national capital which has become multi-dimensionally "greater" without being "great" in any way in the absence of the provision of food and space for living. Water shortage is common there. Nobody should be surprised at the statement made by the Power Minister of Delhi, Mr Narendra Nath, at the inauguration of two booster pumping stations in Bholanath Nagar and Vivek Vihar in the trans-Yamuna area on Monday. He blames the rise in the population of the city for the acute water and power shortage. A welfare state is committed to providing various amenities to every citizen to enable him or her to live a reasonably clean life. The Yamuna provides its sprawling ghats for the disposal of the dead. But it also supplies water for various living purposes. Water came from the present Haryana areas even when the state was a part of Punjab.

There have been several meetings between the rulers of the two territories on the issue of water-sharing. Delhi gets its water supply from Uttar Pradesh and from the womb of Mother Earth also. Local sources are not sufficient and one must have water to exist. The Haryana government is at loggerheads with the ruling Congress set-up in Delhi. If its own needs are dire and it is not able to give its citizens sufficient potable water, it can do some exercise and evolve a formula for the "division of thirst" between the two contiguous belts. This kind of water stoppage is a cruel and politically untenable act in a federation. Haryana Chief Minister Bansi Lal is a seasoned politician and he knows the blessings and benefits of the sharing of resources. Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit is trying hard to relieve the pressure on the newly commissioned 40 MGD water treatment plant at Nangloi. If Delhi is a defaulter in making payments or unreasonable in demanding a very large quantity of water, the Union Government should intervene and set things right. But there are very few reservoirs in the big city and the installation of booster pumping stations with the help of new electric grids cannot solve the worsening problem. Mr Bansi Lal should show grace and magnanimity and offer as much water to Delhi as he can. This has to be done under the framework of the existing agreements and financial arrangements. Party politics changes its course opportunistically. The needs of the people should be treated realistically on a non-partisan basis.

Numbers game

THE craze for having small and special numbers on the number plates of one’s cars and motor cycles is all-consuming. Leave alone the all-important number 1, there is tremendous demand for almost all single-digit numbers as well as 1000, 1001, 1234, 7777, 4321 and 786 etc. People pull all strings to procure these. Earlier, these numbers mostly adorned the cars of senior government officials or those who could approach these powerful people. That is why these were called VIP numbers, so much so that the number of one’s car was considered to be the dependable indicator of his seniority. Whatever this craze did for the ego of the officials, it made the allotting authorities a harassed lot. Perhaps to ward off the tremendous pressure, governments like those of Punjab and Haryana decided to sell these numbers. Even that has not diminished the queues, so much so that the number 1 of one series is said to have fetched the administration more than a lakh of rupees. After all, if there are more than one seekers of a particular number, it is allotted by auction. If that seems like a lot of money, one has to read what happened in England recently, where the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency has been auctioning special number plates for long. Mind you, there is a Punjabi connection also to this story. Rishipal Singh, a 19-year-old student, is reputed to have outbid competitors to buy a number plate for a whopping 17,800 pounds (Rs 1.2 million) during the auction at Edgbaston recently. One can buy a good new car for less than that. But then, the number could not have been more special! It was S1 KHS, which can be easily made to read like SIKHS. So what is Rs 1.2 million for that privilege? Peanuts, one must say. After all, a Sikh businessman had paid as much as 108,000 pounds (Rs 7.5 million) for another number plate which read S1 NGH. Rishipal Singh is ecstatic that the auction did not go any further. He was willing to pay as much as 50,000 pounds.

The story would have been legendary enough if there was only this much to it. But it does not. There is more to it — rather much more. You see, the hero has no car to put the number plate on! He had sold his Ford two months ago to raise money for the coveted number plate. “I am waiting for my mum to buy me a car,” he says. His father is a clothing manufacturer and is presumably in a position to do the needful for him. Even if he were not, the number is special enough to put on even one’s chest. Isn’t it?

NATO’s BRAZEN AGGRESSION
Catastrophic consequences
by Inder Malhotra

JUST a fortnight ago most Indians — or Americans, for that matter — would have been unable to locate Kosovo on the map. Today, thanks to the arrogant, unlawful and unacceptable air strikes on the sovereign state of Yugoslavia, of which Kosovo is an integral part, the place has become the stormcentre of an international conflict and crisis more explosive and dangerous than any in Europe since the end of the second world war.

The instrument raining death and destruction on the Yugoslav Federation — and, ironically, also on Kosovo — is, of course, NATO which is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary and was expanded only recently by the addition of three East European countries, formerly Communist and members of the disbanded Warsaw Pact. But the main driving force behind the monstrous exercise is the USA, punsh-drunk on power and the globe’s self-appointed super-cop.

At the time of writing, comprehensive bombing attacks on Yugoslavia have been intensified. A further escalation in their ferocity is promised, after a hurried meeting of the North Atlantic Council, the political wing of the formidable military alliance. The reason is obvious. The nearly week-long pounding of the Yugoslav targets, including innocent people, has not produced the desired result of forcing the Yugoslav President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, to throw in the towel or be overthrown by his own army.

There is no doubt that whatsoever Mr Milosevic has been doing in Kosovo — a region where 90 per cent of the population is of Albanian ethnicity and Muslim is a country with a Serb majority that is Slav, Serb and Christian of Russian Orthodox faith — is reprehensible, indeed execrable. In a part of the world that has historically been a mind-boggling mixture of mutually hostile ethnicities and therefore a hotbed of unending ethnic warfare and the starting point of both world wars during the century now coming to an end, the gory goings-on in Kosovo have been of a place with the chaos and murderous upheaval following the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in which Tito alone was able to maintain some kind of peace and stability for four decades.

Mr Milosevic’s barbaric suppression of the Kosovars has got to be stopped. But he alone is not responsible for the inhuman situation in Kosovo even if the bulk of the responsibility is his. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), no less brutal than Serb special forces, has been using guerrilla warfare and terrorism to bring about Kosovo’s secession from the Yugoslav Federation. The NATO alliance is coy about who has supplied the KLA with the sophisticated weapons it is able to use against the Yugoslav army with considerable effect. This explains, though it does not excuse, the savagery of the Serbs anxious to preserve the sovereignty and territorial integrity of their country or whatever is left of it.

There is a further complicating factor in the situation which makes the current NATO action highly suspect notwithstanding the humanitarian veneer being given to it by the high-pressure, US-led propaganda. Kosovo does have an overwhelming Albanian majority. But it is also the birthplace of the Serbs and is indeed considered “sacred” by them. The demographic change has been due entirely to the 500-year rule of the Balkans by the Ottoman Turks.

This, incidentally, brings one to the fact that 20 million Kurds, spread over Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria, have been struggling for a homeland for themselves against very heavy odds for half a century. But Turkey and other countries have suppressed them no less brutally than the Serbs are dealing with the Kosovars. Nobody has lifted a finger to help the poor Kurds. Come to think of it, the Russian atrocities on the secessionists of Chechenya (casualities between 50,000 and 100,000) had surpassed anything happening in Kosovo. However, the principle of not intervening militarily in the internal affairs of a sovereign state was so far observed in all such cases.

Now it has been given a go-by. A pernicious precedent with profound implications to the global order has been set. But because it is totally violative of international law and the UN Charter, it has got to be opposed and eventually demolished. That, of course, is easier said than done. But America’s and NATO’s self-righteous aggression against Yugoslavia remains indefensible and deplorable.

To say this does not mean that Mr Milosevic can be allowed to go on and get away with his outrageous behaviour in Kosovo or any other part of his country. But the institution to deal with the problem is the United Nations, not NATO. Unfortunately, the UN and its Security Council have been disdainfully bypassed by Mr Clinton, his faithful servitors in Britain and other NATO allies. The world body’s prestige, already at a low ebb, has been eroded further.

In any case, the most pertinent point is that under an interim agreement, reached in October, 1998, Mr Milosevic had agreed to concede and respect enough autonomy to the Kosovars that he had circumscribed in 1990. What he was not prepared to accept was the demand that the entire Serb army and police be withdrawn from Kosovo, and that a NATO force, including 4,000 American GIs, be stationed in the region to “monitor” the peace and implementation of the autonomy accord for three years, to be followed by a referendum on Kosovo’s future. The Serb rejection of all this is entirely understandable because a referendum under the circumstances would have been a sure recipe for secession.

A second question no one among the NATO hegemon answers is a simple one. If nothing more than autonomy was to be enforced, why was Yugoslavia not offered a UN-supervised peace-keeping force.

Badly, a UN force has now become academic. The USA and its allies have seen to it. Only three major countries, Russia, China and India, who constitute a majority of the world’s population and possess nuclear weapons have opposed the NATO arrogance and aggression unequivocally. India is, thank God, not a member of the UN Security Council. But, of the 10 non-permanent members of the council, only Namibia voted for the resolution demanding immediate cessation of hostilities by NATO, moved by Russia and supported by China. All others — Bahrain, Malaysia, Gabon, Gambise Argentina, Brazil, Canada, the Netherlands and Slovania — shamelessly succumbed to the US dictates.

India’s position, as expounded by its ambassador to the UN, Mr Kamlesh Sharma, is sound and praiseworthy. The Prime Minister has briefly spoken on the same lines. But not only is India’s voice not yet loud enough but also the Vajpayee government is not showing any signs of learning the real lesson of what is going on in Yugoslavia at present and has happened in the past in Iraq. To avoid a repetition of a Kosovo-like situation in this part of the world, the Indian minimum nuclear deterrent has to be made unambiguously credible. For this purpose the development of Agni missile has to forge ahead. For inexplicable reasons, the enhanced Agni is not being tested. This hesitation must end at once.

The crowning irony of the death dance in Yugoslavia is that the brazen NATO action may prove counterproductive. This is so because serial bombing alone cannot salvage the ground situation as experience in Germany and Japan in the second world war and, above all, in Vietnam underscored. The Americans are scared of committing ground troops. By the time America and its allies realise their folly, the UN may well be on the way to suffering the fate of its unillustrious predecessor, the League of Nations.

The halfway journey
by Hameeduddin Mamood

“THE defining moment” has passed into history, leaving its fragrance behind. Excepting Britain everyone in the world has felt buoyed by the psychological change in the relations between the August twins — India and Pakistan. In the past 50 years every step forward in normalising relations between them has been inevitably followed by two steps backward.

The first important summit-level contact between India and Pakistan was the visit of the (assassinated) first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaqat Ali Khan, to India during Sardar Patel’s lifetime. It yielded the memorable Nehru-Liaqat Pact of 1949 whose monumental importance in the most tense post-Partition scenario can be recalled only by those who lived through those turbulent years. It was followed by Liaqat Khan showing his “mukkah” (clenched fist) to India.

In January, 1966, India’s Lal Bahadur Shastri met Gen Ayub Khan of Pakistan in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, under the aegis of the Soviet Union. The result was the Tashkent Pact, Its one tangible outcome was the starting of the Urdu Service of All India Radio, which played a vital role in the influencing public opinion in Pakistan during the Bangladesh crisis. It was followed by Pakistan freezing all rail communications with India. In 1972, Indira Gandhi signed the Simla Pact with Pakistan’s Z.A. Bhutto. Pakistan got back its lost territory and its POWs, and India received “Hate India” tirade in return. The only continuing legacy of the Simla Pact has been Samjhota Express. On February 21 this year, the present Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, signed the Lahore Declaration with his Pakistani counterpart, Mr Nawaz Sharif for a structured, cascading “composite and integrated dialogue” with Pakistan, amidst the vandalism unleased by the Jamaat-e-Islami.

The Lahore Declaration committed India to resolving, among others, the Jammu and Kashmir issue. What Pakistan gained was equalised by the ground it yielded on the nuclear issue. At the popular level, the launch of a bus service, “Sada-i-Sarhad”, between Delhi and Lahore will go down as the most lasting legacy of the Lahore accord. For one thing, it will demystify Pakistan.

The Congress took its own time to warm up to the Lahore accord, lest its positive response gave its rival, the BJP, the credit for a breakthrough. The BJP President, Mr Kushabhau Thakre, right from the outset, maintained that the Vajpayee move had “national” support, meaning thereby the support of the national executive of the party. In retrospect, the BJP always recognised the reality of Pakistan and, after the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979, saw great virtue in Pakistan serving as a buffer between India and Russia. Chanakya believes a big country should not have a strong neighbour. Would the BJP extend the same logic to the Siachin area in Ladakh?

For Mr Vajpayee personally, rapport with Pakistan always had primacy right since his first visit there in 1978, as Foreign Minister of the short-lived Janata coalition.

Nehru never had a positive neighbourhood policy, resulting in friction with Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Indira Gandhi had a dynamic neighbourhood policy. This is perhaps the only meeting ground between the Congress and the BJP.

This leads to the logical conclusion that the BJP coalition government in India, under the leadership of Mr Vajpayee, is Pakistan’s last chance for settling all outstanding disputes between the two countries, festering since Mountbatten and Radcliffe sowed the seeds of permanent antagonism between the two neighbours. It is time to do away with the painful legacy of “Merchant Imperialism”.

In my view, the most important outcome of Mr Vajpayee’s Lahore yatra is the bilateral accord on nuclear and missile issues a real triumph of diplomacy. In my view, however, greater importance should be attached to the Prime Minister’s assertions in Lahore: he was “dutybound” to create “a solid structure (read framework) of cooperation”; there was nothing which could not be resolved through “goodwill and direct dialogue”; “we will succeed in doing so, no matter how hard we have to work in achieving it”; and the Indian leadership would not hesitate in showing courage.

The writer is a retired Indian Information Service officer.

Most hated person on earth
by Amardeep S. Dahiya

I HAVE never been a BIG BOSS in my life. Well, actually not even a small one. Probably for that reason I have at times envied and fancied them and have dreamed to become a BIG BOSS myself one day. Since I was a young graduate I have tried to ape and build in me the qualities of a BIG BOSS: arrogance, ruthlessness manipulativeness, indolence and hardheartedness on one hand and charm and energy on the other.

As for the bosses I have had in my life they have, with a few notable exceptions, — disliked me, despised me, hated me or a combination of such feelings. I have blamed their disdain towards me to their inherent meanness which one needs to have to be a successful boss and to the fact that I share with them their insatiable thirst and massive appetite for money, power, sex and alcohol. The few bosses with whom I was able to hit it off perfectly were women and the reason for the success of this boss-employee relationship had to do less with my work, which is sloppy, careless and generally incomplete, but more to the overtime hours I put in at their apartments.

I was continuing to hone my skills waiting for the day I would also be having a chauffeur-driven six-door limousine with a satellite phone, a lavish bar and some top model as my secretary. However, a recent rendezvous left me thinking if it was really worthwhile to covet this position. It started some time last week when I read a recent poll on bosses. The poll conducted across a crosssection of people from different religion, sexes and nationalities concluded that an overwhelming majority voted bosses as the most instrumental and powerful force to shape their life but also the most resented and detested personality in their lives bosses singly inspired the greatest amount of feelings in people: inspiration, awe, love, respect. Not only this, 80 per cent of people sexually fantasise about their bosses at least on more than one occasion and bosses of both sexes make fabulous and phenomenal orgasmic material in everyday lives of people. But in spite of all these privileges bosses were universally voted as the most hated person in the world.

I was pretty disturbed by the poll as in spite of my dream to become a great boss I would never like to belong to one of the most hated classes of society. As the findings didn’t suit my conviction I was contemplating in typical bossy fashion to dismiss them as overly fickle and prejudiced. However, the panel conducting the poll consisted of a few intelligent men besides my friend MM who himself was a busy, powerful director. MM for long had been my guru in my quest for attaining bosshood and I decided to visit him and clarify this undue criticism of bosses.

Though they come in all shapes and sizes MM was the typical boss: middle aged, pot-bellied, a receding hairline with a secretary having a body and face right out of the centrespreads of glossy magazines. Also in typical bossy fashion, especially when leser souls like me are concerned, I was ushered into his plush offices given a coffee by this 23-year-old powerhouse secretary who told me to wait as the boss was wrapping up a meeting with bankers. She hung around the office and we started chatting. As time ticked by we started getting cosier especially with the help of MM’s wellstocked lavish bar. I was thoroughly enjoying the experience especially to get an insight into the workings of Big Boss office. There were intrusions though which were not exactly to my liking: calls from leasing companies regarding overdue pavements on limousines, assistants walking in every 15 minutes with some pill or medication for the Boss and so on.

Well it seemed that MM and the bankers were giving quite a long and hard time to each other because suddenly I realised the Royal Salute bottle was half empty and Suzanne, who had always kept a decent distance with writers like me, was sobbing on my shoulder complaining about, guess whom, bosses, past, present — even future ones.

Befuddled, I calmed her down and asked as to why she hated the very people whom everybody looked up to, people who had provided her with a fat salary, car and what not. Well, she said: “I believed big bosses were made of great stuff; that they were super human beings: what Mohammed Ali was to boxing. But then you know what happened to Mohammed Ali.

Awaiting judgement

Renuka’s murder — where are the culprits?

Facts at a glance
* Renuka raped and murdered on August 26, 1995
* Case transferred to the CBI on November 28, 1995
* Suspect Sunil Gupta declared proclaimed offender on February 27, 1997
* CBI filed affidavit in High Court on September 23, 1998, saying
it had been unable to trace his whereabouts
* Case now fixed for hearing on April 7

———

YAMUNANAGAR: “ I have lost all hope of getting justice in my lifetime,” says Mrs Kamlesh Sharma, whose teen-aged daughter Renuka was brutally raped and strangulated to death more than three and a half years ago. In tatters and sitting dazed in her one-bed room house in Railway Colony, she blames the Haryana Police and the CBI alike for their failure to trace the rapists and assassins of her daughter.

A 42-year old aanganwari worker, Mrs Sharma sobs and adds:” Renuka was the youngest of our three daughters. On August 26,1995, when she cheerfully left for the Government Girls Senior Secondary School, where she studied in 10+1 class, little did I realise that she would be brought dead in the evening.”

She pauses for a minute, moves out of her house and points to the spot — about 100 yards away — from where Renuka was kidnapped that afternoon as she was returning from school. Later, she was raped ( or gang raped ?) and done to death. Her body was packed in a gunny bag and abandoned under a cluster of eucalyptus trees near the railway line.

In the evening Avinash Sharma, a local resident, informed Renuka’s parents that the body of an unidentified girl wearing pink clothes was lying near the railway line. Within no time her father Mr Subhash Sharma, accompanied by a few relatives and local people, rushed to the spot and opened the bag. To his horror, it was Renuka’s body.

The police registered an FIR on the same day on the basis of a complaint lodged by the victim’s father and started searching for Sunil Gupta, who was suspected to be behind the foul deed. Sunil ran a ration depot in the railway colony and lived a few yards away from Renuka’s house across the lane in a house rented out by a railway employee.

The people of Yamunanagar and surrounding areas were up in arms against the district administration, demanding immediate arrest of the culprits. A sustained agitation was launched for several consecutive days. The Railway Employees’ Union demonstrated on the first day, on the second, a demonstration was held by the local Brahmin Sabha. On the next day came Mr Om Parkash Chautala, Haryana Lok Dal supremo, and so on.

Dissatisfied with the investigation Renuka’s mother and a Joint Action Committee formed by certain local activists preferred two separate petitions in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, levelling identical allegations against the police and praying for a probe by the CBI. The petitioners charged the police with “ not acting with sufficient responsibility and conducting the investigation in a manner which indicates ( a desire to) hush up the matter and permit the real culprits to go scot free.”

The petitioners also stated that two local residents, Mr Balram and Mr Raj Kumar, had made statements before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate of Yamunanagar on October 4 and 18, respectively, alleging that they had seen Sunil Gupta and one Rajinder Kumar driving the motor cycle ( which was used for throwing Renuka’s body near the railway line). It was also alleged that Sunil’s wife, Anju Gupta, had made a statement in the presence of various people that some other persons were also involved in the crime and the police had failed to arrest them.

The stand of the then SP of Yamunanagar, Mr S S Rao, who filed a reply to these petitions, on the other hand, was that the police had made all-out efforts to arrest the accused and interrogated more than 250 persons, whose list he attached with his affidavit. He stated that a reward of Rs 25,000 had been announced for any information that could lead to the arrest of the accused. Posters and advertisements carrying Sunil Gupta’s photograph had been released to leading newspapers.

Mr Justice Swatantar Kumar, before whom the petitions came up for hearing, extensively recorded extracts from the affidavit filed by Mr Rao.

The affidavit claimed that “the so-called Joint Action Committee has filed writ petitions to force the police to initiate action against Rajinder Kumar for their narrow political gains, even though it has been conclusively established that he is not involved in the crime. It is, therefore, submitted that the present writ petition deserves to be dismissed on account of being an effort to politicise the heinous crime.”

“There is no evidence on record so far (the affidavit continued) to establish the involvement of any other person except Sunil Gupta in the commission of the crime. It is further submitted that there is no eyewitness to the crime and that no other person from the locality has seen any other person entering or leaving the house of Sunil Gupta, where the rape and murder was committed.”

After hearing marathon arguments for and against the petitions, the Judge ruled on November 28,1995: “ The writ petitions are accepted only to the extent that the investigation shall be transferred to the CBI with complete records so far available with the local police. The CBI shall complete the investigation and put up the challan in the court of competent jurisdiction as expeditiously as possible. It is needless to point out that the local police shall cooperate with the CBI to conclude the investigation and provide such facilities as may be necessary for this purpose.”

Pursuant to these orders the CBI re-registered a fresh case under Sections 364, 376, 302 and 201, I.P.C. and started investigation in 1996. It took into possession the blood-stained clothes of Renuka as also the clothes of Sunil, which included a white kurta and pajama, one set of blue pants, one set of green pants, one white shirt, one green shirt and one blue lungi and sent them to the forensic laboratory at Madhuban, near Karnal.

In his report the laboratory expert opined that the samples of earth taken from the green terrycot pant of Sunil and those from the white terrycot undergarment of Renuka were similar in colour, physical and microscopic appearance had the same particle density. Again, jute fibres found on the undergarments and skirt of Renuka and on the green pant of Sunil connected him with the crime.

The CBI also sent vaginal swabs and a black undergarment of Renuka containing semen to the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, Hyderabad. In his report Dr G.V. Rao of the centre opined that the semen stains on the swab and the undergarment were of different individuals. This fact established, says the CBI, that “at least one or more than one person” were involved in the foul act.

In an effort to probe the involvement of Rajinder Kumar, Ravi Bhushan and Sanjiv Sehgal, as alleged by Renuka’s parents, the CBI sent their blood samples to the Centre at Hyderabad along with Renuka’s undergarments. Dr Rao,however, expressed the view that the blood stains on the vaginal swab and black underwear of Renuka did not tally with the blood of any these persons. This established that none of them was involved in the commission of the crime.

To ascertain whether Sunil Gupta was involved in the rape, the blood samples of his wife Anju Gupta, brother Satish Kumar and son Aman were collected by the CBI and sent to Hyderabad.

In his report dated January 21, 1998, Dr Rao opined that the ”source of semen found on the cotton wool (vaginal) swab is that of the biological father of Aman, that is, Sunil Gupta.” It has thus been established, says the CBI, that Sunil raped Renuka Sharma.

The CBI also quotes his wife, Anju as saying that Sunil did not accompany her to Shahabad on August 26,1995, where they had planned to see an ailing relative. Secondly, Renuka visited their house on August 25 during lunch, enquired about the availability of kerosene and then went to the depot to fetch 10 litres of kerosene.

This circumstantial evidence suggests, says the CBI, that Renuka ( who lived only a stone’s throw away ) visited “Sunil “either at her own or on being induced on some pretext where she was raped and then strangulated, whereafter her body was stuffed in a jute bag and thrown by Sunil on the katcha rasta amid eucalyptus trees.”

Mr Rama Nand Gupta , a local resident, also made a statement to the CBI that he saw Sunil on his scooter on August 26, 1995, at about 4.45 p.m., carrying a jute bag between his legs.

After conducting extensive investigation the CBI submitted its report before Mr Justice Swatantar Kumar in a sealed cover. It has recommended Sunil Gupta’s prosecution under Sections 364, 376, 302, 201 and 120-B, I.P.C.

Sunil Gupta has been at large, however, since the commission of the crime. Both the Haryana Police and the CBI have failed to arrest him. He was declared a proclaimed offender on February 27,1997, by the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Jagadhari.

“Whenever he is arrested his other accomplice (s) in this ghastly and dastardly act of crime can be found out and a supplementary charge-sheet can be filed against them,” states the CBI.

In its order dated March 22, 1996, the High Court had expressed its displeasure over the failure of the investigating agency to apprehend the culprits.

On the next date DIG Sharad Kumar, SP Bhupinder Singh and DSP R.S. Dhankar of the CBI appeared before the High Court and assured that every possible step would be taken to bring the guilty to book and prayed for more time.

Since then the case has been listed before the court about a dozen times. Each time the CBI has expressed its helplessness in arresting Sunil Gupta.

On August 24,1998, Mr Justice Swatantar Kumar pointedly asked DSP D.C. Dharma,who carried out the investigation , to tell the court whether Sunil Gupta was alive or dead.

In an affidavit dated September 23, the CBI officer replied: “Efforts to locate Sunil Gupta (have) continued but no useful result could be achieved to ascertain his present whereabouts. In such circumstances, it cannot be stated whether he is alive or not. Nothing has come to notice suggestive of his being non-alive.”

The case is now listed for hearing on April 7.

75 YEARS AGO

His Excellency’s aim

THAT we have correctly gauged His Excellency’s aim is conclusively shown by three facts. One is that although, as we have said, His Excellency’s action is undoubtedly constitutional, it is at best doubtful if it or the whole of it was absolutely necessary.

His Excellency, as we have seen, had the power to provide any amount that he considered necessary for the carrying on of any department, and we are not certain that the retention of the services of some, at any rate, of the officers and men who are about to be served with notices is not necessary in this sense.

Nor are we sure that the Government would have been in such a hurry to take the action it has done or is about to do if the officers and men had been Europeans instead of being solely or mostly Indians of exactly the class that has most to do with the elections.

The second fact that points to the same conclusion is that for some time the friends of the bureaucracy, both Anglo-Indian and Indian, have been suggesting this precise course to the government.