Hold your breath, dear readers, the impossible may happen if it is not already happening. Revered poacher turned bandit turned brigand turned killer turned Tamil militant Veerappan and his sworn bete noir, the police of the two states of Karnataka and Tamilnadu may be working on a joint agenda, if jungle tales and city buzz are to be believed.
Their common pursuit appears to be to hunt down an errand boy turned editor turned emissary turned errant boy turned … well everything else … who it appears, has simply vanished into thin air … no, make it, air thick with rumours. While the brigand ‘ s eagerness for an early interview with the editor -what a reversal of roles! – is to apparently scoop the insides of the latter to see if the Rs500 crores that was allegedly swallowed still remained there undigested, the police, particularly the Karnataka corps are keen to track down the Almighty that allegedly masterminded the criminal coups, much before they became news stories.
The suspicions have only gained credence what with a missive landing in all newspaper desks from the former emissary’s office while the sender himself remained incommunicado, even to his faithful professional bretheren. Ah, it was but natural that after days and days of shoulder to shoulder, or rather, moustache to moustache camaraderie with the brigand, some habits are bound to rub on. Hence this mystery mail sans the mailer’s whereabouts, a la Veerappan. So would it be a cassette next?
Okay, that was just pep talk; now, let’s get to the real stuff. The emissary, in his lengthy disposition in absentia, has cried foul and offered a point by point rebuttal of various claims made against him by various people, barring of course, those who protested his imminent arrest, just in case. (If anything, it is those fellow journos and the journo in question himself who appear to have betrayed a deep-seated apprehension that the former emissary turned …I will cut that … may be arrested any moment, giving rise to so much speculation.).
Frankly, I was so floored by the force of the editor’s fulminations that for a moment I was fooled into falling for it. On subsequent readings, it dawned on me that much of what has been said either relies solely on the eminent editor’s word or would have to be cross-checked with V himself. Since V is not available for comment as he is busy dodging persistent cops, and since, I, a good-for-nothing-editor who does not even wear a whisker that is worth writing about, possesses neither the jungle map nor the clairvoyance that some of my better endowed – that is, with moustaches – peers of the profession are blessed with, … gosh, what I was getting at was that, I am not in a position to check notes with the brigand.
But there is another document that has been tagged on to the grand rebuttal, that speaks volumes and volumes about the entire sordid kidnap episode of the year last. Flaunting an undertaking given by the two governments, written in Queen’s English and translated into the local tongue, appparently for the benefit of the emissary’s visiris, the invincible turned invisible journo has sought to argue why he should never be touched, let alone be arrested now.
We have written enough in these columns in the past about the absolute impotence of the two State governments and their unprecedented keenness to prostrate not only before the jungle king but also his urban shadow at the mere mention of the word kidnap. But never even in our wildest of surmises had we imagined that the two rulers, in the course of their free fall from grace would breach terra firma and plunge to such depths of ignominy with nary a shred of resistance.
If what the emissary has displayed is true, as one should tread with caution when dealing with such situations, the governments had not only abdicated their lawful duties to the people in favour of a plenipotentiary emissary, which we all know, but also had shamelessly recorded its own surrender in black and white. There are assurances that clearly transgress all norms of constitutional propriety, public decency and worse, any sense of shame and cannot be justified even if the canon of public interest is invoked.
It is quite apparent that the assurances were given under duress, and it is but natural on our part to speculate who was the bigger blackmailer, the brigand or the emissary! The brigand, at least, was seeking amnesty only after commiting crimes, but we have the emissary extracting an immunity for even potential infringement of the law.
Sample for instance, some of the Ten Commandments, ostensibly vetted by the emissary, that the government had signed on the dotted line:
Nakkheeran Gopal and his associates shall be given immunity against penal provisions if any of their activity is secretive or contrary to the obligations under law.
The specious logic here seems to be that in order to deal with an outlaw one is justified in becoming an outlaw himself. The law of the land can blissfully go to graze in the fringes of the jungle!
No criminal prosecution will be set in motion against Nakkheeran Gopal and his associates in any future date, in respect of any of their activity during the mission.
The familiar but worn-out cliche ‘above law’ has never faced such a test in all these centuries of its usage. The emissaries, therefore, could, ‘during the mission ‘and not necessarily’ for the sake of the mission ‘as the immunity covers ‘any of their activity’ , shoot, loot, kill, even run brothels and perform any criminal act with impunity and they would not be hauled up, not now, not ever! Whatever they do would be deemed as done in the course of their mission of rescuing Rajkumar.
Now I am not suggesting that the emissaries committed these acts or were intending to, but still, does not such a carte blanche to persons who have never bothered to even appear transparent by taking refuge under the sky-like cover of press freedom and their right to protect their news source, cock a snook at law? And to think that those vested with the duty of protecting the law should be issuing licences for its very breach, well, indeed this is a cursed country!
These are but a few drops from the ocean of insult that inundated the nation during those shameful days. We now dread to speculate on the promises, written or otherwise, that may have been made by the State governments to the super emissaries, the very patriotic Nedumaran & Co. May be we will get to know ony when nemesis catches up with the self-styled Tamil ideologue too, and god knows, what skeletons would tumble out! It’s possible that in such a case, as now, our journalists bretheren would protest his incarceration too as Nedumaran would have written some article in some newspaper at some time in the past and would therefore qualify for relief under press freedom.
Or the fraternity may not get so fussy over trivia as they have set a wonderful precedent by seeking to protect an editor from the viles of the law even when he was not acting in his journalistic capacity and had only embarked on a private mission but paraded to be at the behest of the People of the Sovereign Democratic Republic of India, as represented by its elected governments.
One wonders what triggered the panic in the emissary that warranted the extraction of such all-encompassing promises from the government. On the date of the assurances – 9th of October, 2000, as is evident from the ‘document’, the emissary was already on his fifth sojourn to the jungles. There is also some talk of a case filed in the Rampura police station in Karnataka against the emissary for subversive activities much before the Rajkumar drama seized centre stage and reports that the emissary was moving heaven and earth to get the complaint withdrawn.
Again, it also happened to be the period around which the governments were veering around towards Nedumaran in preference to the editor, at the the behest of Tamil militant Veerappan. Clearly, from all indications, the editor was in jitters, for only he knew what he had done, whatever that was. But whatever that was that he had done, his goodsense had told him that as a matter of abundant caution, such a document should be secured from the two governments, who were only too eager to throw all caution to the winds for the emissary to grasp! But then, why should the editor now seek to flaunt these assurances when there is that impregnable shield of press freedom to protect him, come what may, not to mention his steadfast mediamates?
To be fair to the emissary, assuming that he has a genuine case against his prospective arrest on the basis of the document signed by the government, the larger issue of whether the rulers were within their constitutional rights to commit themselves and the people who voted them in by inking this draconian document, merits debate.
Again, with the Karnataka government now seeking to ‘renege’ on its assurances, it devolves upon it to prove that the emissaries had thrust the document down its throat with a clear, prior mal-intent, something it has been suggesting of late – that the emissaries themselves were aware of and abetted the plot to kidnap Rajkumar.
If proved, that would also turn out to be a greater self-indictment of the government itself for its culpability in walking into a patently outrageous commitment thoughtlessly, but that should be okay, because being dubbed a fool is always better than being a partner to a crime from a legal standpoint and the governments in any case never had an intelligent face to show, in the first place.
The entire issue deserves to be tested in the legal lab as it relates to the act of an officialdom at the end of the tether signing contracts that might have been ultra vires the constitution in favour of parties who might have been driven by criminal intent, as it now suspects.
And that can happen only if cases are filed against the ‘appropriate persons’ and such persons are secured, even if it runs the risk of slightly denting the press freedom of some. But as they say, like London, Press Freedom too can take it! At least for the sake of the nation which is larger than the media and its favourite brigands!
| POINT OUT : The larger media willy-nilly acquiesced in the march of fame and fortune to these men who never took any of their bretheren into confidence in their so-called journalistic sweep-stakes — T R JAWAHAR |