Author: S Gurumurthy
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: December 3, 2004
URL: http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.asp?ID=IEH20041202114926
Twenty four hours later it turns
out that Usha is a cancer patient for 15 years and has undergone radiation
therapy 130 times, yes 130 times! That Jayendra Saraswathi was giving financial
help to her. Her name was mentioned by the police in the court as a possible
accomplice of the Acharya! The police obviously knew that that the `woman'
angle would also malign him.
This is headlined in newspapers
whose readership is in millions. Damage done is irreversible which cannot
be undone by the truth that came out a bit too late.
`The Acharya has confessed he is
involved,' the police tell the court. They know that the confession claimed
by the police, of course denied by the Acharya, is no evidence in law.
Actually the police are bound in law not to disclose it. See now the reach
of the law on confessions. A man kills someone and goes to the police and
files an FIR against himself.
The Bombay High Court sets him free
on bail, saying that that he has indicted himself is no ground to keep
him in jail. This is also no ground to convict him. This is the law. See
how the police get around the law against the disclosure here.
It first plants news in some yellow
journals that the Acharya has confessed. Then that is picked up by a TV
channel and telecast. By now millions and millions have read and seen the
news, with disbelief. Then comes the prosecutor's statement in the court
that the Acharya has confessed. Now the entire media carries the police
statement as the final nail in the coffin!
As if all that remains is that the
Acharya has to be just hanged. The police know that unless the Acharya
makes it before the court, that confession is not valid in law. The ordinary
people do not know law and so they do not know this too. They think that
the so-called `confession' is the last word.
Have the police ever told the public
that this is no `confession' in law? Has the media ever alerted the public
that law will not look at this `confession'? For contrast look at how the
very media handles those accused of terror, pontificating on human rights
and what not.
The way the polity, media and the
police is handling Jayendra Saraswathi and more than him the revered Kanchi
Mutt is vicious. It is no more an investigation. It has turned into persecution.
The assassination complaint against
him has descended into character assassination. As recently as a decade
ago, one of the greatest saints of modern India, Chandrasekarendra Saraswati,
also known as the `Mahaswami' or the `Paramacharya' was heading the Kanchi
mutt which has a 2500-year history.
It is this institution which is
being mauled today, virtually undefended. The attackers know that the Mutt,
which lacks the skill and the infrastructure to take on the might of the
attackers, cannot defend itself.
Hence more attack by the attackers
is met with more silence by the Mutt. The triad of polity, media and the
police have effectively convicted Jayendra Saraswathi for culpable homicide
on no legal evidence -yes, no legal evidence - with the two accused persons
having publicly disowned their confessions against the Acharya.
With their retraction, the prosecution
is virtually dead, unless the police torture someone else to secure a confession
against the Acharya. If there is a verdict on the evidence the police have
the Acharya will be honourably acquitted. But how many know that fact?
Never in the history of India has
an institution of high reverence been so recklessly and disrespectfully
dealt with. Compare this with what happened when the Islamic institution
of Deoband at Nadwa revered by millions of Muslims was raided, by the Central
and state police, in the 1990s for harbouring ISI agents, an act endangering
national security.
The raid was called off midway,
yes midway, and Narasmha Rao, the then Prime Minister, had to send two
of his senior ministers, one a Hindu and another a Muslim, to apologise
to Ali Mian, the head of the Nadwa institution. So the law takes `its course'
at Kanchi and `another course' at Nadwa.
With so much malice already in the
public domain if tomorrow the judiciary sets Jayendra Saraswathi free for
want of evidence valid in law then the very public, fed on media stories
of his culpability, will think that the judiciary has set him free for
reasons other than law.
That is how such vicious campaigns
will hit even the judiciary. It does no good to any one, be it the government,
media or the judiciary. Even if, at the end, I am entirely proved wrong,
I cannot shirk my duty to alert the public and sensittise the authorities
about the destruction of too many values involved in this investigation
which is gradually turning into battle between the silent and silenced
Kanchi Mutt on the one hand and the police and its associate, the media
megaphones on the other.
It is no more an investigation into
a crime. Having transcended to unreleated areas, it is now a larger design
to defame and discredit the Mutt itself. Will the Chief Minister have a
look at what is happening in the case and set it on course?
Writer's email: comment@gurumurthy.net
