How can a duly elected government be browbeaten into dropping criminal charges filed against certain people for obstructing the due process of law? Does the manner of arrest, even granting that it was improper for the sake of argument, diminish in any way the intensity of crimes the ‘ victims ‘ were alleged to have committed?
If such were the case, there could never be any arrests in this State, nay this country itself, for use of force is second nature to all the law-enforcers of the land even in instances where the cooperation of victims was forthcoming. In the present case, there are visual evidences of those sought to be arrested and their relatives openly defying, intimidating and even fisting it out with the police.
If those who arrested feel that they have been man-handled, it is open to them to file counter cases or approach the Human Rights Commission or seek other forms of redressal. But demanding the summary dropping of all cases on the lame claim that their arrest was in violation of human rights only betrays a guilty mind trying to make the most of a favourable emotional climate.
And we all know how this emotional climate came into being and how it pulled the wool over the eyes of the entire nation for two full days.
How can the dropping of cases alleviate their hurt, real or feigned? Do they mean to suggest that, since they were arrested in an ‘ improper ‘ manner, they not only deserved to be let off but all the charges also be dropped and that the police are free to arrest them again in the ‘ proper ‘ manner under the very same charges? Sounds funny?
But is that not the most logical conclusion of their arguments? Indeed this is a very cheap trick that only such men of straw can conjure up. All along, these gas balloons have claimed that they are not scared of court cases and that they have the moral courage to face up to any trial.
But now we see that all it takes is an arrest or even the prospect of arrest to scare the wits out of them. Of their moral courage to face upto any trial, the less said the better. Then, they might even demand UN intervention to extricate them!
Their anguish is understandable. While the whole of Saturday, right from the wee hours and a good part of Sunday went their way with an entire nation duped into climbing an emotional spiral so cleverly(?) woven by the Sun TV, the tables started turning slowly with the visuals of a smiling Karunanidhi flanked by his kith and kin and that fatal and fisty fling by MM at Mohammad Ali also making its way into public attention. (It ‘s a comic irony that a man bearing the name Mohammad Ali should be at the receiving end of a boxing bout).
The underlying plot of this perfectly enacted stage drama was that if the focus was shifted to the ‘ manner of arrest ‘ , then the ‘ essence of the arrest ‘ , which was the corruption charges, could easily be buried in the din. It did happen the way the play was scripted, but only until the other party came up with the footages of the dress rehearsals too.
With the curtains going up or coming down, depending on whether you are watching SunTV or Jaya TV, prematurely, the co-borns have now realised the futility of their overkill and promptly changed tack.
Now it is no longer the manner of the arrest which is central to their dubious crusade; in any case the Sun TV is keeping up an admirable tempo on that count with even filmy stuntmen and dubbing artists getting drafted to condemn the treatment meted out to a 78-year-old Tamil Scholar.
With Karunanidhi himself preferring jail to bail albeit during the remand period, the realisation seemed to have dawned on them at least temporarily, that the wheels of law will have to roll on for the kalaignar to be back in circulation. But the raging question for them is now the assault on federal authority which had manifested itself in the form of ‘ man-handling ‘ of two Union Ministers and their subsequent detention.
The Ministers have unfinished tasks in the Capital and never thought that their weekend would see such a long extension in Chennai. But getting released without the cases being dropped would mean several such weekends, something these ‘ busy ‘ ministers cannot countenance. Hence all this hulla-bullo about a constitutional breakdown warranting an invocation of that dreaded Art 356.
If anything it was Mohammad Ali ‘ s jaw that stood the chance of getting broken, not to speak of the gates of the CB-CID office that also got broken down under the impact of a well directed Tata Safari crashing into it.
The NDA without doubt is going to find it extremely difficult to climb down from the high horse that they willingly climbed on that scary Saturday. I have no information on what the NDA constituents and other members of the Cabinet had to say on the video visual of Maran raising his ringed fist and bringing it down on or in the vicinity of the face of a police officer.
Obviously, he was not batting flies out there in the dead of night. Nor was Baalu trying to borrow a policeman ‘ s uniform on a humid night when he first tugged at it, and then pulled it forcefully along with the human stuff inside it. The cop went sprawling on the ground and Baalu soon joined him voluntarily for a few good rolls till partymen restored his perpendicularity to the ground.
Apparently the ruling elite in New Delhi were so taken in by the performance of their boisterous colleagues that the gift of Art 356 was deemed perfectly in order. And this has been certified no less than by a man of unimpeachable integrity as vouched for by Tehelha & Admiral Bhagawat answering to the name George Fernandes.
George ‘s addiction to Art 356 is well known and he recommends it as a matter of habit to all the States that he is sent to trouble-shoot. For the DMK, Art 356 is pure poison that had felled it twice in the past. Would it not turn into nectar if it is administered to the enemy?
If Karunanidhi ‘s arrest and the manner of it could not secure the same, the next best alternative is to create a Centre-State hiatus and a federal crisis on the alibi of two Union Ministers landing in State custody, notwithstanding the fact that the two ministers necessitated their own arrests only by their rash behaviour.
Instead of continuing to wear the wool over their faces, the NDA constituents must muster the courage to tell their TN partners that enough is enough. Art 356 is in the statute books to protect the people and Constitution and not to save Karunanidhi and his acolytes from corruption charges or to endorse their antics.
The Ministers are prolonging the federal agony only by their own cowardly intrasigence and there is very little the constitution can do about it. The sooner the two ministers are made to understand this the better it would be for their political health. Public memory is short and media interest is transient. And the TV viewers may just switch channels! The duo will only be left swinging their fists, in mid-air this time.
PS : This article was written before the Tamilnadu government’s decision to drop the cases against the two Ministers. The sentiments expressed in the article, however, still hold good.