New Delhi: The National Commission for Women (NCW) has condemned the “light” punishment given to a former senior police officer for molesting a teenaged tennis player and has urged a fresh look at how the case was investigated.

S P S Rathore, a former director general of police in Haryana, was on Monday given six months imprisonment by a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Chandigarh in the August 1990 Ruchika Girhotra molestation case. He got bail the same day and didn’t have to go to prison.

Ruchika, a 14-year-old budding tennis player, committed suicide in December 1993, following her and her family’s continuous harassment allegedly at the behest of Rathore.

The NCW has set up a five-member committee of jurists to examine the case files to see if investigation in the case was influenced. The commission has written a letter to the Haryana Chief Minister, requesting him to explore the possibility of appealing against the judgment.

Rathore has refused to comment on the allegations against him. “Personally, I do not have any grudge against the media and I respect its freedom. I would approach them only when the right time comes,” he told IANS on Wednesday.

“I am not like other people, who are giving interviews on television or to the print media and to speak illogical things that come to mind,” Rathore said.

Anand and Madhu Prakash, whose daughter Aradhana was the prime witness to the molestation, and their lawyer say the punishment given to Rathore is too little.

CPI-M MP Brinda Karat, while speaking in the Rajya Sabha, called the punishment in case shameful and urged for tougher laws in sexual harassment cases.

“A criminal who committed that crime in police uniform and escape justice for 19 years was rewarded with promotion after promotion. And, 19 years later this criminal has finally been found guilty. What is the punishment – just six months.”

“And the day he was convicted, he was out on bail within 10 minutes. Isn’t it a shame for all of us… how long can we tolerate this kind of action. It reveals deep infirmities in our system of delivery of justice,” she said.

MUCH VICE AT THE SEAT OF VIRTUEGurmeet Singh came to be the current Dera head with a Khalistan leader’s help and has amassed a fortune ever since

Not so benign: Singh is married with three children but devotees have to practise celibacy

Founded in 1948, the Dera now controls over 700 acres in Sirsa, its seat in Haryana, and has almost 2.5 crore(this is proved to be wrong see my article ) followers

The year is 1990 and Punjab is in the grip of militancy. Gurmeet Singh, a 23-year-old Jat Sikh from a family of landlords in Gursomondia village in Rajasthan’s Ganganagar district, takes over the gaddi at the Dera Sacha Sauda in Sirsa. His taking over of the dera from Param Pita Shah Satnam Singh Ji Maharaj, a Khatri Sikh, is at the outset shrouded in taint. Gurmeet Singh is a close associate of the dreaded militant, Gurjant Singh Rajasthani, of the Khalistan Liberation Force. Sirsa is agog with hushed talk of the ouster of Satnam Singh by Rajasthani. That sets the tone for an expansion of the Dera’s fortunes and of Gurmeet, who takes on the title of ‘Hazoor Maharaj Sant Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh’.

Since its modest foundation in 1948 by Mastanji of Baluchistan, the Dera now controls over 700 acres in Sirsa alone. It commands over 2.5 crore followers(this is proved to be wrong see my article ) and has branches all over the region. Sirsa is now an independent township replete with factories, a cricket stadium and swimming pools. But villagers had not been willing to sell land to the expanding Dera. “Coercion was employed,” says Ashwani Bakhshi, a Sirsa lawyer practising in the Punjab and Haryana High Court. “For example, thousands of devotees would use the fields to defecate, forcing the villagers to sell off their land. In one instance, a child of a neighbouring village was crushed by a Dera truck. When the irate villagers seized the truck, thousands of devotees descended upon the villagers and beat them up. It was not uncommon to see reports of dead bodies being found in the Dera’s vicinity.”

Free labour from devotees and a directive to buy goods only from the Dera’s factories laid the economic foundation. “During the OP Chautala government, the Dera got the tender to build the road from Sirsa to the Dera. Women devotees, coming from affluent households and who may never have lifted a stone in their lives, were made to build the road. The money from the road contract was seized by the Dera’s management. The Dera also indulges in the business of cotton seeds and fetilisers but pays no taxes. It is immune to the law. One can see the origins of this cult in the takeover of the Dera by Gurmeet Singh after his relative, the militant Gurjant Singh Rajasthani threatened the previous Dera head with a revolver,” Anshul Chhatarpati, a Sirsa journalist, told Tehelka. Anshul’s father, Ram Chandar, was killed by Dera functionaries in 2002 according to the cbi’s chargesheet.

Lakhs of devotees throng the Dera. The new ‘Santji’ has discarded the simplicity of his predecessors and dons fancy robes. Politicians queue up to seek the votes of Santji’s ‘premis’. “On Santji’s brithday, the streets of Sirsa are crowded with lakhs and lakhs of devotees. I make it a point to visit the Santji. I have also attended the marriage of Santji’s daughter to Punjab Congress mla HS Jassi’s son,” says Dirba Kalan’s Congress mla Bharat Singh Beniwal. Apart from Beniwal, many of the region’s political heavyweights, such as Amarinder Singh, Parkash Singh Badal and OP Chautala, have visited Santji in the past. While Santji is married and has three children, the resident devotees at the Dera are directed to practise celibacy.

Under the watchful eye of a private army, silence and fear shroud the Dera. There is such an atmosphere of secrecy that the Sirsa District and Sessions Judge could not make much headway on a probe ordered by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2002 on allegations of sexual exploitation of sadhvis by the Santji. In his report submitted to the High Court on September 11, 2002, the Sessions Judge noted: “As regards the sexual abuse of girls in the Dera, nobody in the Dera is prepared to disclose anything in this respect. There is no access to the hostel where the sadhvis reside without prior permission of Baba Gurmeet Singh or the Dera authorities.”

Major allegations

The most damaging allegation as yet on Baba Ram Rahim is of a female follower’s letter anonymously sent to Prime Minister, President, Chief Minister of Punjab (India) and Haryana and to session judge of Punjab (India) and Haryana High Court and Supreme Court and a DGP of Police in 2002. It claimed that Baba Ram Rahim had allegedly raped her and at least 50 more female followers in the Dera Sacha Sauda premises. – After the publication of this letter in a newspaper the editor of the News Paper “Pura Sach”, Ram Chandra Chatrapati was murdered. – The case was then handed over to CBI to investigate further. – And after the CBI there was another murder of a Dera Follower Ranjit Singh. His father also complained in the courts that Baba Ram Raheem was directly involved in the murder. So the CBI included the murder of Ranjit Singh into its ongoing investigations. – The case then moved on in a snail pace; only after the dera and sikh community clash did the high court order the CBI to submit its report on 31 July 2007 by all means. -This report has been submitted and CBI has framed Babba Ram Raheem and has not given him clean chit , it means CBI has found him guilty. The CBI will release its details on 1st August and will produce all the evidence collected to the court on 31 August.

In October 2007, Baba Ram Raheem got an interim bail in murder, rape cases by a Special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court.

Breaking all boundaries of vandalism, the act of beastly violence that was executed by the police today at Sant Shri Asaramji Ashram, can terrify & shake the heart. The rally that was drawn in protest against the Sandesh newspaper saw their own miscreants getting into the crowd and instigating the people to pelt stones at the police. In the resulting violence that ensued, some senior police officials and other police staff were injured in the attack. One or two senior officials also suffered some major head injuries in the conflict with the crowd. The revenge for this act was inflicted by the police on the same day by brutally assaulting about three to four hundred participants in the rally. 236 people were arrested, including people who were admitted in hospital after being injured in police lathi charge. The people admitted in hospital were also not spared and were picked up by the police after preliminary first aid treatment. Legal Section 307 relating to murder was also imposed on them. But the senior police officers were still not satisfied even after inflicting such cruel brutalities on the people who believed in Hindu religion & culture and were devoted to their spiritual Master. In their rage of anger, they wanted to engulf the entire Ashram of Pujya Bapuji. The culmination was a huge and terrible terrorist attack like situation in the Ashram late in the afternoon wherein a large convoy of nearly 150 policemen suddenly struck the Ashram premises. Whoever was found in the Ashram, wherever & in whatever situation, was beaten in a barbaric manner with lathis, sticks, shoes and rifle butts. People were chased in the Ashram, and catching hold of them, they were bundled up in half a dozen large police vans. All showcase glass windows were smashed unnecessarily. Some sadhaks had closed the doors of their rooms out of fear. Their rooms were broken through and those sadhaks were taken away while mercilessly beating them with sticks on the way. Even elderly sadhaks who had come to Ashram from out-station for anushthhaan were not spared. The room of one of the sadhaks, who was doing saadhna in the Maun Mandir for a week, was also broken through, and he was dragged away by the police, pulling him by the hair. Such was the nature of cruel police brutality that they even opened fire to terrorize the sadhaks who were running towards the river to save themselves. This entire operation of police imposed terror in the peaceful Ashram of a Self Realized Brahmagyani saint lasted for about one and half to two hours. Every nook and corner of the Ashram was searched; people were looked up from every single place in the Ashram, and in the end, they were hurled into large police vans which were already kept prepared for the encounter.

The incident did not end here. About 10-12 kids and elderly sadhaks were released from the place where all these people were taken (possibly due to legal implications). Out of those released, was a retired South Indian professor who had himself suffered 10-12 blows with sticks at the hands of the police. He updated that the police had planned for them to sit in an open field about 50 yards from the place where they got down the police van. All along the way, the policemen positioned themselves on both the sides and armed with sticks, assaulted the arrested people saying that their senior officer had suffered 10 stitches in the head (during the rally). The vengeance of the ten stitches on their senior police officers was wreaked on numerous innocent sadhaks by the inhuman police jawaans. It appeared as though these police officers were keen to please & display their loyalty to the senior officers through such malevolent acts.

The architect of these entire heart rending scenes which shake the foundations of humanity was “Sandesh” newspaper. Sandesh newspaper has been exposed to the public recently in a sting operation CD named “Sajish ka Pardafash” for directly conspiring for many years in nefarious activities & defamation acts against Pujya Bapuji. Through its unscrupulous and scheming ways, Sandesh created unrest in the rally and pitched the police against the Ashram. Using its complete financial and political influence to save its existence, Sandesh thus planned & executed the entire event.

The atrocious behavior of the police in today’s civilized society is a stigma on the name of humanity. No condemnation can be too high for this brutal act.

We would like to appeal to Hon’ble President of India, Prime Minister, Supreme Court Chief Justice, Union Home Minister, the Governor of Gujarat, Chief Minister and Chief Justice, all humanitarian organizations throughout the world, Chairman Human Rights Commission, and good leaders of all political parties to immediately come forward and investigate this inhuman act, so that stern action is taken without delay against the guilty. The clandestine role of the owners of “Sandesh” newspaper involved in secretly conspiring against the Ashram should also be investigated. Hordes of enthusiastic photographers & reporters from the electronic & print media were on the spot to cover the entire event of police terror, which was broadcast LIVE not only in India, but internationally as well. Else, this heinous act would have remained unknown and overlooked by all.

Apart from these organizations, we would also like to appeal to all the honored saints of the country wide religions & communities that they join us against this extremely well planned attack on the Indian “Sanatan” culture, so that we can give such forces a fitting reply in time and protect the very existence of our religion, culture and society.

With this aspiration,

Hari Om…

Satyam Computer Services Limited was nationalized in January 2009 after its executive Chairman, Ramalinga Raju, confessed to overstating profits. It later emerged that more than $1.5 billion was illegally transferred from Satyam to Raju’s personally owned firms; these included a property firm, Maytas Infra Ltd as per copyright, that owned a $3 billion contract to build the Hyderabad Metro Rail system.

It appears clear that Satyam Computer Services Limited’s independent directors did not fulfill their duties. For instance, at a board meeting on December 16, 2008, to vote on a resolution to approve the acquisition of the Rajus’ property firm by Satyam Computer Services Limited at short notice, none of the independent directors questioned why only that firm was being considered for acquisition rather than any of the other property firms in the market (given the depressed state of the property market at the time, this should have been an obvious question). All the directors voted for the resolution.

The collapse of Satyam Computer Services Limited, India’s fourth-largest IT firm, shocked its clients (whose list included 185 of the Fortune 500 companies) and industry generally. It also challenged the usefulness of two pillars of Indian corporate governance laws – that listed firms employ an independent auditor and that the board should have a majority of independent directors.¹ It also raised questions about corporate governance and corruption generally in India, the scope and effectiveness of the laws on corporate governance, the scope and endemism of corporate corruption, the causes, and underlying trends.

Corruption in India is neither new nor limited in scope. India ranks 85th among the 180 countries in a recent study by Transparency International on political corruption.² The World Bank ranks India in the 25th to 50th percentile on the ability to control corruption.³

Economic corruption in India arose due to state controls of production through licenses and quotas. To gain access to licenses, corporations paid bribes. To gain access to goods and services in short supply, the public paid bribes. Thus, in the public mind, corruption, slow growth, inefficiency, and poor quality became inextricably linked.

A second source of corruption was the misuse of state power. The state has misused power in various ways. These include overstaffing public departments with favored voting groups, reallocating property rights to favored business groups and dispensing privileges in return for campaign contributions. The third source of corruption was inadequate disclosure and enforcement of corporate actions. With a few exceptions, listed companies were run as family firms that viewed their firms as hereditary fiefdoms.

India began reforming its laws from 1991. Licensing for production was eliminated in the 1991 reforms, thus solving the problem of inefficient production and short supply of goods and services.

The state has also shifted from governance by quota to independent regulation. Regulators in finance, insurance, and telecommunications, among others, have been empowered with the right to enforce global best practices and given independence from other organs of the state.

However, corruption in state patronage remains, particularly in land and civic infrastructure allocation, patronage recruitment, and election finance, despite reforms in these areas.

In summary, it appears that while Indian laws are better than in most developing countries, corruption is rampant due to the forces of patronage and lax enforcement. It is widespread enough to be considered endemic. The Satyam Computer Services Limited episode is symptomatic of a wider problem rather than a one-off.

Right. Like many, I too decided to cash in on the fall in real estate prices and bought myself an apartment. The registration is still due; so is the possession.  When the developer said I could get my apartment registered, I was very happy.

I called up the builder’s office and asked how much that would cost and the lady from the builder’s office on the phone told me the stamp duty cost.  Apart from the registration amount, I need to keep aside Rs.25000 towards the legal fees, she said.

I raised my eye brows because I thought Rs.25000 is way too expensive a legal fee. I am not buying a company for god’s sake! I am just buying a decent apartment.
I asked her to explain why it is so expensive and also wanted to know what it covers. She said it covers the lawyer’s fees in preparing my sale agreement and said it also covers the miscellaneous amount. I asked her for a break up on how much goes to the lawyer and how much goes towards the miscellaneous part.

She said Rs.10000 goes to the lawyer and the balance Rs.15000 is miscellaneous.
This cracked me up. I laughed out loudly – this was the first time in my life that I heard something as this where “miscellaneous is expensive than the actual part”.

I am sure she must have noticed exclamation marks all around my head even through the phone!. I collected my composure, sat down and asked why the miscellaneous part was higher than the actual part? She said, ‘’Sir, you know about it.’’ She obviously took me for granted.

I said, ‘’Madame, honestly I don’t know about it’’ and requested her to explain to me. She said, Sir… (pause)… Sir… (pause)…. Sir, miscellaneous is towards bribe for Sub-Registrar.

Now things started heating up and I said, No way I am paying this bribe. I got very furious on how the system is operating. She said, I could not avoid this if I wanted to get my apartment registered without any delay.

She also said, if I didn’t pay up, then they (builders) would have trouble in getting work done from the Sub-Registrar’s office for other clients. She requested that I pay this amount to ensure their relationship with the Sub-Registrar wass kept alive.

Firstly, why should I pay bribe to get my apartment registered which I have bought with my hard earned money? Secondly, going by what that poor lady said, why should I pay up to ensure they maintain good relationship with the Sub-Registrar?  What do I get out of it?

Why is a layman targeted like this? The development where I have bought the apartment has close to 600 apartments. A simple math throws light on how much this Sub-Registrar makes illegally from bribes. Where does this bribe go? Who all get to share this? These are the questions that are bothering me as I have stopped worrying about how I will escape paying this bribe.

The structure appears to have a bureaucratic core. The bureaucracy which was set up to control economic life has created the incentives for individual and institutionalized corruption. It’s a classic case of fence eating the crop.

The time has come to dismantle the bureaucracy as that would be the first step to fix the problem of corruption in India. This would lead to transparency and abolish the bribes that political parties could extract through the bureaucratic machinery. It will have a productive effect – that of getting bribe-seeking thugs out of political system in India.
Isn’t India’s development critically dependent on reducing corruption?
As I ponder, all I can say is “God Bless My Country”!

A recent issue of Outlook had a cover story on Koda, the former Chief Minister of Jharkhand, who is alleged to have looted Rs 4,000 crore from the state. A related article in the magazine was on all the scams that have taken place in India and how little we seem to care about all those stories on corruption.

The Reddy brothers, YSR’s family, Koda, Raja – these are just the latest additions. They are the tip of the iceberg. For the record, all of them get away with the loot, and continue to be in positions of influence. Indeed, I cannot think of a single politician who has put behind bars for corruption.

This is a cancer that is not restricted to any particular political party. It infects the whole system. An honest politician has become an oxymoron.

Politics has become a way – and perhaps the only way in India today – to amass unimaginable wealth in the shortest possible of time. Of course, entry to the club is becoming increasingly difficult because politicians have realised that getting one or more of their offsprings into politics is the surest way of ensuring the ill-gotten wealth stays. The façade of ‘youth’ is being used to legitimise power and money procured by dubious means.

We, the voters of the country, are as much to blame. We don’t demand accountability. We keep voting back to power the same folks who keep ripping us off. And in all this, we stay a poor country – waiting forever for the date with destiny.

Rajendra Shekhawat campaigning in Amravati, where his parents once held elected office. His opponents belittle any suggestion that his family did not orchestrate his candidacy and call him a carpetbagger

Rajendra Shekhawat, nicely polished in a pressed white shirt and neatly parted hair, his face sunburned from campaigning in the south Indian sun, says he is running for office as a common man. His pink cheeks suggest otherwise, though, since common men in India usually toil outdoors without requiring sunscreen.

Another clue is the elephant in every room in which he campaigns in this city in the state of Maharashtra: Mom. She is Pratibha Patil, the president of India.

“I’m not using my parents’ name at all,” Mr. Shekhawat, 42, stated in an upstairs office in his parents’ home, which he is indisputably using as a campaign headquarters. “I’m running on my own. But for sure, being in a political family for so many years does help me, and gives me easy accessibility for doing the work of the people.”

Democracy is built on the oft-tarnished ideal that any man or woman can get elected, but in India, home to the world’s biggest democracy, it helps to be part of a political family. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, scions of the governing Congress Party, is India’s version of the Kennedys. But other political dynasties, large and small, have proliferated so rapidly that many analysts believe nepotism is corroding the political system.

India’s chaotic politics can sometimes seem democratic to a fault: the election cycle rarely pauses and the country has roughly 1,050 registered national and regional political parties. But most of the major parties, including the majority Congress Party, are internally undemocratic; there are no primaries and party leaders discourage public dissent. Party bosses select candidates and have shown an increasing tendency to select their own relatives.

Here in Amravati, the decision by Congress Party leaders to run Mr. Shekhawat for Tuesday’s elections in Maharashtra State has provoked an angry backlash. He is running for a state assembly seat in the same district where his parents once held elected office. But to put him there, Congress leaders pushed aside Mr. Sunil Deshmukh, a former radiologist and two-term Congress incumbent with broad local support. Leaders offered Mr. Deshmukh the chance to run elsewhere, but he rebelled and is seeking his own seat as an independent.

“This is a fight against injustice,” declared Mr. Deshmukh, warming to his role as political insurgent. “If he is defeated, that will send a very strong message to all parties, no? If the person is only the son or daughter or a nephew of an important person, you can’t just thrust him on the people.”

Across India, political families are entrenched at every level of government and politics. At least nine of the 32 members of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet either descended from political families or have children seeking or holding office. Parliament is littered with political families; a recent study found that 31 of the 58 women elected had a husband, brother, father or father-in-law in politics.

The trend is even more glaring at the state level. In Maharashtra, analysts estimate that 30 or more party candidates running this month are from political families. The state’s chief minister, the top executive post, is the son of a former chief minister. This is also the case in two other states while the Congress Party is strongly considering replacing the late chief minister of Andhra Pradesh with his son.

“It has gotten into the DNA of the Indian political system,” said Jagdeep Chhokar, a founding member of the Association for Democratic Reform in New Delhi. “To control the workings of the party, the leader depends on trusted people. And one of the traditions of Indian culture is that you trust family members more than outsiders.”

Indian politics have a high turnover rate and voting blocs can be defined by region, religion, caste or community. Yet analysts say Indian voters favor a familiar family pedigree, partly because of a cultural reverence for the family and because of habits in some regions that trace back centuries. Several of the royal families who ruled over feudal states have today evolved into political families.

Modern India’s political marketplace is so crowded with parties and candidates that the “brand” of a familiar family name can bring an advantage, several analysts say. And the closed nature of political parties often perpetuates the dynastic problem; in several cases, rebels who broke from one party have formed their own and installed relatives around them.

Few political families are eager to step away from the power and lucre of office. In the state of Haryana, which has several local political dynasties, a recent study concluded that incumbents running for re-election had increased their personal wealth, on average, by 388 percent during their five years in office.

“Every political family these days is keen to keep someone in the field,” said Suhas Palshikar, who teaches politics at Pune University in Maharashtra. “Lots of resources are involved. Lots of networks are involved. And to put it crudely, a lot of money is involved.”

Mrs. Patil, 74, the Indian president, has less than three years remaining in her term. The position of president is largely ceremonial, with real power invested in the prime minister and his cabinet, though the presidency does command deference. Mrs. Patil’s press officer said the president had not been involved in her son’s candidacy but that the son, like anyone, has a constitutional right to seek office.

Her son’s opponents belittle any suggestion that his family did not orchestrate his candidacy and call him a carpetbagger who has spent much of his life away from Amravati, returning only in the past year after his political ambitions had been kindled.

“His only asset is his mom,” said Dr. Pradeep Shingore, 56, a cardiologist who is the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate for the seat. “Politics is being used as ancestral property.”

On a cloudless morning in one of the city’s slums, the incumbent, Mr. Deshmukh, led supporters on a padyatra, or foot march, a ritual in Indian politicking. Sprinkled in the crowd were the mayor and 20 other local officials from the Congress Party who are defiantly supporting him.

“People are very angry,” said Ashok Dongre, the mayor. “These families are not good for democracy because the common person, the party worker in the field, should be encouraged to go for higher positions. If you do not do that, how will the party succeed?”

Many observers consider Mr. Deshmukh the favorite in the race, though he faces practical obstacles. Every candidate on the ballot is accompanied by a party symbol, which provides a guide for illiterate rural voters. The Congress symbol, an open hand, is iconic in India. But as an independent, Mr. Deshmukh had no symbol; after considering choices offered by the election bureau, he decided upon an image of a television.

“He has come to seek your blessing!” a campaign worker shouted in the slum as others waved banners with the television image. “His symbol is television! Tee-vee! Tee-vee! Tee-vee!”

For his part, Mr. Shekhawat, the president’s son, brushes aside criticism of his candidacy. He is making his first run for office after working for an educational institute controlled by his family and has spent more than a decade working inside the Congress Party. He says Mr. Deshmukh has failed to promote development projects adequately and accuses him of the political sin of disloyalty.

“This kind of defiance shows indiscipline,” Mr. Shekhawat said. “Nobody is above the party. Nobody.”

Nepotism presents an especially complicated question for the Congress Party and the Gandhi dynasty. Rahul Gandhi, the presumptive heir to the party, has been visiting poor villages while promoting the idea of making the party more open and internally democratic. As part of his tour, Mr. Gandhi appeared Friday in Amravati for a rally with local Congress candidates.

On the stage with him was the president’s son.