Author: S. Gurumurthy
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: November 22, 2004
URL: http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.asp?ID=IEH20041121122432&Title=Top+Stories&Topic=337&
The entire polity of Tamil Nadu
except the BJP is ranged against him. Never in the history of the state
did the DMK and the AIADMK, whose leaders never meet, ever unite on anything
as they do on this issue and against him.
The lawyer's outfits are targeting
his head. For the 'secular' media it is a godsend to say not just that
the Modi type Hindus are criminals, even Sankaracharya is one such. It
is having a field day in publishing and showing all kinds of rubbish. Here
there is no difference between the yellow journals and the serious ones
in the content that is carried about him.
Today the Kanchi Sankaracharya Jayendra
Saraswati is standing like Abhimanyu caught in Chakravyuha. Thanks to the
vicious atmosphere, the Acharya has been convicted at the bar of the public
even as the investigation on the charges against him has just begun.
As his known enemies gloat over
this, his vast and dignified followers who do not know how to burn buses
and indulge in arson on the roads suffer in silence.
The charge against Sri Jayendra
Saraswati is that he conspired to kill a person who was carrying on a vicious
campaign against him and the Kanchi Mutt. The prosecution case is that
the Acharya alone, almost no one else on his behalf or for his assistance,
was involved in the conspiracy!
The police says, and wants all to
believe, that Acharya himself identified the killers, negotiated the terms,
gave them the contract, paid the advance, met the killers after the event,
pleaded with them to bear with the delay in remitting the balance, and
talked to them on phone and so on.
The case against the Acharya rests
on three circumstances. One, the Acharya had a motive to eliminate the
victim. Second, the Acharya was in contact with the main killer over phone.
Third, there are cash withdrawals in the bank accounts of the Mutt, which
have been used to pay off the contract killers.
This sums up the case against the
Acharya.
There are two ways to approach a
criminal investigation. Particularly in a case in which a revered religious
leader, representing the oldest religious order of the nation, the Sankaracharya
order, is involved.
One, that he is guilty because he
could not get over the normal human failings of anger and vengeance. The
other that he is innocent and is being fixed by the organisers of the crime
using his own apparent motive.
Having almost condemned him as a
criminal, let us look at it from the perspective that he may be innocent,
a perspective the prosecution has clearly ignored.
Undeniably the victim was hostile
to the Sankaracharya and the Mutt. So the Acharya could have had the motive
to eliminate him. But the letters written by the victim and sent to all-important
persons in society including the opposition parties, show that the victim
has fixed who the accused would be if he were killed. He had said that
if he were killed it was the Kanchi Mutt who would be responsible.
So here is a golden opportunity
for some one to fix the Mutt and the Acharya, its head, if he so wished.
All that one who had to do to finish off the reputation of a reputed Mutt
and the Sankaracharya was to finish off the victim by a contract to kill
him.
This could be done without any risk
of the doer being accused of murder, as the victim has already identified
who would be his killers.
The Sankaracharya must have known
that if anything happened to the victim the investigation would target
the Mutt, if not him. Why would he then invite the charge?
Despite the victim indicting the
Acharya and the Mutt in advance of the murder, the police have gone on
the assumption that the Acharya is guilty, namely that the Acharya invited
the charge on himself by obliging the victim. This is totally against common
sense.
Again the Kanchi Mutt had long been
a target of the anti-Hindu Gods movement and the situation presented the
best opportunity to hit at the credibility of that great institution. It
was an eye sore to the rationalists and anti-nationals. That the main hit
man engaged for the task is linked to the DMK is important.
Despite these circumstances, the
prosecution has not examined, even in theory, whether some one else could
have eliminated the victim so that the Mutt and the Acharya emerge as the
readymade accused.
This may be less than a one per
cent possibility, but still it is a possibility. A key prosecuting police
official is too deeply associated with the DMK to be indifferent to his
link. So from day one the police seem to have fixed the Acharya as the
culprit and begun collecting evidence to that effect. Obviously this suits
the settled political climate in this state.
Writer's email: comment@gurumurthy.net
