When outlaws take their own course

Ignorance of outlaws and their ways is no excuse and it is the bounden duty of every lawful citizen to supplicate to the supremacy of the lawless. At least, the lawfully elected CM of the State of Karnataka believes so. When reporters wanted to know if he would try to explain to the brigand the implications of the Supreme Court stay on the release of the TADA detenues, the CM mournfully remarks that it is to the SC that he will have to explain and not to Veerappan.

Meaning that V is entitled to stick to his guns and it is only the law of the land that will have to ‘see reason’ and play ball to the brigand’s whims. So if tomorrow, the worst happens, it would be solely owing to the apex court’s ‘intransigence’ and not because of the brigand’s terror tactics.

The outlaw, endowed as he is with lots of guns and guts is automatically expected to stand tall and dictate while the law being an ass can certainly afford to bend, obey and take the moral burden too. Blessed are those born as bandits! And with this latest bout of capitulation Krishna has added yet another feather to his bowed head.

Now over to our own rational CM who for reasons best known to himself, seems to entertain phenomenal faith in the brigand’s compassionate instincts and his sense of the right and wrong. Karunanidhi is unfazed by the SC stay and says that his government would keep its word given to Veerappan, come what may. He also goes on to add an unwarranted assurance that even the Karnataka government would keep its word, without even bothering to hear the SC’s final verdict four days hence!

But wait! There is something else the CM said that really strikes one between the eyes like a thunderbolt. ‘Veerappan knows that I would keep my word’. So the faith is afterall, to put it mildly, mutual. When the wavelengths are compatible as is evident from the extraordinary mental telepathy between them, where is the need for telephone connections in inaccessible forests which in any case is lacking as the CM himself pointed out helpfully to clueless reporters only the other day.

When there is such perfect meeting of minds, will not the distances and the difficult terrain melt in a jiffy. One can hazard a thousand guesses on what begets this unique camaraderie between law makers and law breakers but then as we have learnt to our distress, that is a threshold that is easily breached with the former effortlessly merging into the latter and vice-versa.

Politics-Crime nexus is passe; it is now a case of a mutually sustaining understanding that begs to be recognised. If Veerappan wants to become a politician, what is wrong if politocos deem it fit to learn a bit of bandit psychology? Merrier still, if there are pliable emissaries to broker the exchange … of both views and vocations.

So, if Veerappan proposes, the CM’s would dispose for they know only too well that it is futile to oppose. And they are not the least ashamed and on the contrary deem it a constitutional duty to share this enlightenment with all and sundry. The myriad cases under every conceivable section of law and the legions of victims spread over two states and two decades are of no consequence to these custodians of the constitution.

What matters to the rulers is the present crisis and their rank inability to even pluck a hair on the brigand’s whisker. Indeed, the sorry spectacle came to the fore at the SC hearing yesterday when the counsel for the State initially admitted that the government was totally helpless vis-a-vis Veerappan and then beat a hasty retreat when the Judge wanted to record the admission for posterity.

So, what happens once the current crisis too passes into history, anywhichway the brigand deems? Will the governments summon the will, courage and strength to storm the jungles?

Well, one has grave doubts now, what with both the concerned (?) CMs displaying exemplary obeisance to the Jungle Lord, one out of mortal fear and the other driven by sheer admiration, but both playing a unique doet that is not certainly music to our ears.

While the first one seems irrevocably convinced about the brigand’s invincibility, the other, rationalist that he is, appears to see eye-to-eye with him, the vision, ably aided by a footloose emissary who, for his part, sees moustache-to-moustache with his jungle pal.

The trio has already dropped enough suggestions that there is no ball in Veeerappan’s court and it is all upto to the Supreme

Court to understand their predicament albeit self imposed and oblige them and thereby the brigand, despite the anguished pleas of the kin of V’s victims.

As days pass with the duo’s indiscreet ramblings of appeasement and surrender touching a crescendo and the emissary’s frequent nocturnal dalliances with a barbarian getting the official sanction and legitimacy, one wonders if it would be deemed traitorous to even raise his voice against the brigand. Who knows, one may even be booked under TADA for that ‘offence’!

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