Tags:
Journalism of Courage
It is truly mind-boggling that an alleged criminal like Romesh Sharma could operate with impunity all these years right under the nose of the Central government. If the newspaper reports that have appeared so far are anything to go by, he was a law unto himself. A petty businessman, he has over a short period built up assets worth hundreds of crores of rupees in the Capital and elsewhere through extortion and forced occupation of property. Not only that, he had the money and muscle to think even in terms of floating a political party with a view to capturing power. Politics was not an altogether new field for him as he had, unsuccessfully albeit, contested the last elections in Uttar Pradesh. Throughout he maintained excellent contacts with politicians in power, who were permanent fixtures at the gala parties he frequently threw at his palatial bungalows and sprawling farmhouses. He had his contacts with dreaded gangster Dawood Ibrahim, whose name he used to strike terror in the hearts of his victims. Inreturn, he provided cover to Dawood’s kin at a time when police across the country were looking for them in the wake of the bomb blasts in Mumbai. It is unbelievable that the Delhi police had no clue to the goings-on in Sharma’s mafiadom until, the other day, he fell into their net by chance.
It is such an eventuality that has to be prevented. In the Jain hawala case, the charge against the hawala operators was that they had financed both terrorists in the Kashmir Valley and leaders of mainstream political parties. In Sharma’s case too, his beneficiaries included powerful politicians and gangsters. In the hawala case, the ineptitude of the investigators helped the politicians to escape, even though some of them admitted to having received money, as mentioned in the Jain diaries. If such a fate is not to befall this case, the path these investigations take should lead to those verypoliticians and officials who helped Sharma build his reputation as a ruthless operator.
