Inside Track

While names of politicians are bandied about without any concrete evidence, the media has avoided mentioning the names of policemen. Consider the following. Prabhat Singh, former additional DCP, South Delhi, stood guarantee for Sharma so that he could get a passport. Singh is now tipped to become OSD to Vasundara Raje Scindia, Minister of State for External Affairs. Ajay Aggarwal, Special Commissioner in charge of Security, Delhi, and formerly DCP, SouthDelhi, recommended Sharma’s case for an arms licence.

Sharma was such a VIP for the police that he did not even bother to sign his own licence application form. Joint Commissioner of Police, Southern Range, Amod Kanth, who is presently handling the investigations, was OSD to former minister of state for home Subodh Kant Sahay when orders were conveyed from the Home Ministry to the Delhi Police that Sharma should be granted Y-category security.

In February last year, there was a raid in Khirki village on the hide-out of Dawood associate Chhota Shakeel in which 10 kg of RDX were recovered.

Sharma’s number figured prominently in the list of calls made by Shakeel, a proclaimed offender. But thanks to powerful protectors, Sharma was not questioned by the police.

Stealing the glory

The CBI and the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police in a joint operation had been investigating and trailing Romesh Sharma for two months before his much-publicised arrest. As a courtesy, the South Delhi Police, in whosejurisdiction Sharma lives, was alerted. It jumped the gun and raided 10 residences connected with Sharma and in the bargain upstaged the other departments which had initiated the probe. Furious, both departments refused to take part in the raids or share their information. Consequently, the raids were a bit of a damp squib. There was no cache of arms or RDX discovered and the only criminal cases made out against Sharma initially were of owning assets disproportionate to his income. The police also sheepishly backtracked after first hyping up the importance of the raid on a Reliance executive, V. Balasubramaniam, by claiming that they had found evidence of links to Dawood.

But while the Crime Branch and CBI distanced themselves from the South Delhi Police’s raids, the Income-Tax (I-T) Department was extra cooperative and accompanied the police everywhere, setting a new precedent. The I-T’s obliging attitude is perhaps because Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha is related by marriage to Amod Kanth, JointCommissioner of Police, Southern Range.

Politically incorrect

A decade ago, some women journalists at a feminist meeting took exception to my reference to actress Sridevi’s nickname “Thunder thighs” in an article.

I was unsympathetic to their complaints as I do not consider the remark gender-based. After all, an actress’s physical attributes are pertinent to her profession and one could as easily have referred to an actor’s flab.

But a popular columnist’s recent references to women politicians by their physical attributes — describing Sonia Gandhi as the thin woman from Turino and Jayalalitha as the fat woman from Chennai — are another matter. All politicians, male or female, are either thin, fat or medium-sized, and it is irrelevant to their politics. Remarks about pasta, nuns and Italian accents just to keep raking up Sonia’s roots are offensive.

Of late, a new breed of born-again saffron scribes has started lecturing all of us on the values of including Sanskrit and the Vedas in theschool curriculum, while sending their own offspring to the most anglicised institutions. A dangerous corollary to this school of thought is to imply that Hindus fluent in their mother-tongue and well-schooled in their religious heritage are somehow more patriotic than those of us who are non-Hindus.

House problem

Why has Sukh Ram suddenly issued yet another warning to the BJP that he could withdraw support to the Himachal Pradesh Government? According to a deep throat, Sukh Ram’s threats have little to do with his home state. It is his way of expressing his resentment over the A.B. Vajpayee Government’s dilly-dallying in providing his son Anil Sharma, a Rajya Sabha MP, a government bungalow in Delhi. The Himachal leader is convinced that Urban Development Minister Ram Jethmalani is being deliberately unhelpful.

First Jethmalani refused to allot the junior Ram his father’s old ministerial bungalow since he was only a first-time MP. Finally a non-ministerial bungalow in Tuqhlaq Lane was allotted.The problem is that the former Congress MP who occupies the bungalow currently is reluctant to move out and Jethmalani gives the impression that he is not keen to evict him.