Opinion Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh and Anand Mohan: How justice is politically mediated

So, why the silence in the case of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh? As Sandeep Dwivedi wrote on our pages: “A history-sheeter as federation chief – is it a factoid that Indians can proudly flaunt at wrestling halls around the world?” Singh was reportedly booked under TADA for allegedly harbouring Dawood Ibrahim associates in the 90s and his name figures in several ongoing court cases. A report by Shyamlal Yadav says Singh, a Thakur leader from UP, has been an education baron running over 50 self-financing colleges. He, or his wife, has been an MP since 1991, losing just once in 1998. Clearly, this politician wields so much influence, that his party and government are willing to risk public censure rather than pull him up.

Jagmati Sangwan and Indu Agnihotri write: “The main factor underlying this state of affairs is the utter lack of political will to implement the law on the part of the state. This ensures that justice is neither certain, nor speedy and almost routinely denied. The result is that perpetrators of violence against women are never punished, nor are those responsible for implementing the law held accountable for their actions and inactions.” Sangwan and Agnihotri write that the battle for women to live and work in dignity is critical to the idea of India.

It is not known if Anand Mohan Singh, a gangster turned politician from Bihar, shares Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh’s passion for sports. But there seems to be a lot in common between them, at least in the way their friends in politics are willing to bat for them. Politicians — from the JD-U and RJD — bent the system to let Anand Mohan walk free from a Bihar jail this week. Anand Mohan had been serving life imprisonment for the murder of G Krishnaiah, the then district collector of Gopalganj, in 1994. A tweak in the jail manuals rules helped the government to remit Anand Mohan’s conviction. This is what the Gujarat government seems to have done for the convicts in the Bilks Bano case. Chandrabhan Prasad indicts politicians who claim the political high ground in the name of social justice but are willing to back a Thakur leader who is convicted for killing a Dalit IAS officer. The Indian Express editorial writes that Anand Mohan’s freedom stains Sushasan Babu Nitish Kumar’s governance record and insults the memory of the murdered officer. Because “Anand Mohan is no singular criminal politician, he is representative of an ecosystem wherein crime, caste and politics mingle to form a deadly cocktail”.

Meanwhile, the tall leader of Punjab and Opposition politics, Parkash Singh Badal died this week at the age of 95. The Indian Express editorial writes: “The Shiromani Akali Dal he helmed and helped transform from a Panthic party to a party of Punjabiyat was a regional force, but Badal, like the late DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, transcended the limits of regionalism to articulate a politics that subsumed ethno-nationalist impulses under the rubric of a federal India. In that sense, Badal was more of a national leader than a provincial politician.” Badal was a healing presence, as Opposition leader and chief minister, as Punjab struggled to leave behind the tragedy and trauma of the violence-hit 1980s and 90s.

This nation listened to the 100th episode of Mann ki Baat this Sunday. F Sheheryar, a former director general of All India Radio, writes how they thought after the 2014 general election that the new Prime Minister could make “good radio” and requested him to create “an apolitical bridge between the elector and the elected”. The rest, as they say, is history.

Thank you,

Amrith

Amrith Lal is Deputy Editor with the Opinion team