Fugitive factory

Former chief minister of Kerala E K Nayanar gets a non-bailable arrest warrant on February 10, 2009 for a road blockade around Thriruvananthapuram district collectorate on September 12, 2002. Nobody had told the magistrate that the most popular politician in the state died on May 19, 2004.

The legal system can be comical as well as cruel. It made the late leader – who was chief minister till 2001 – posthumously absconding. Nayanar the satirist would have loved the irony.

Going by court records, many of the political activists are fugitives. Some of them go on to become ministers and receive salutes by the same policemen who are supposed to track them to their hideouts. The accused never knew they have been accused of anything. Either the court messenger didn’t give the summons to the local policeman or the policeman didn’t serve the summons on the accused.

If a television reporter could get an Ahmedabad magistrate to issue warrants against the then President A P J Abdul Kalam and the then Chief Justice of India V N Khare at a cost of Rs 40,000 in January 2004, the policemen are doing the same to unsuspecting citizens across the country by sitting on summons.

They fail to serve the summons to the accused and return it to the court, which in turn, issues an arrest warrant against the ‘evader’. An archaic system of recording address – district, taluk, village and other obscure revenue subdivisions – contributes to the confusion. The pin code efficiency of the postal system is yet to catch up with judiciary in India.

Not long ago, a student leader had faced revenue recovery proceedings by a local court. SFI’s then president Sindhu Joy and her comrades, forever in news for their numerous agitations in front of the state secretariat, were declared ‘absconding’ by the court. Call it laziness or laxity. But top cops aver that the force is prompt. Only there are too many warrants and too few to execute it.

But when it comes to arresting and accusing people, the police work overtime. They call it combing. Years ago, a plumber accused with a petty offence was introduced before the magistrate in Aluva. The magistrate, who fortunately followed the proceedings and asked the accused in private about any complaint against the police, was told that the man was nabbed a fortnight ago. He had come from Idukki in search of a job to raise money for his daughter’s marriage. The police took him in from the bus stand “under suspicious circumstances.” The plumber’s pipe range was a potential “housebreak implement”. “My daughter was supposed to get married by now. I don’t know what happened,” he said.

A serious case of abuse of power. The policeman on combing duty finds a “suspicious-looking” man in a bus stand. He takes him in. Fine. But he is supposed to present him before a magistrate within 24 hours. The cop, however, decides not to register the arrest and forgets about the “criminal”. Despite the detainee’s pleas, the police put off the case. Finally he verifies the address given by the plumber and confirms it, keeping him in illegal detention all these time. A fit case for taking action against the cops. But the plumber, anxious to return to his worried family, pleads the magistrate not to. The magistrate knows better. The policemen had enough scope to avenge the victim under another pretext.

Our cops may look tough, but on closer look they are as naughty as any teenage prankster. They raise the dead to hang them. They proclaim the living as dead. They make ministers absconders. They make little girls bandits. Of course, you need an eye for humour to appreciate their efforts.

A group of student activists, accused of ‘destruction of public property’ during a street agitation in Kochi a few years ago, was bewildered when they got a copy of the chargesheet. None of them has heard the name of the first accused. Anyway, they needed to find him if they were to be let on bail. The search finally ended in a city hotel, where the first accused has been working as a waiter.

The youth, hailing from a remote village, had gone to the university centre in the college on that fateful day to enquire about a law course. Inexperienced, he found himself at the centre of the melee. Since law was blind, its keepers acted deaf to his explanations. The law students were surprised to hear the waiter giving them tips on conducting the case. The wannabe law student has learned his lessons.

No wonder cops are second only to cancer on the villain’s list in our movies.

Moral cops: recruitment open

February 14: Red roses, poem cards, teddy bears, ice-cream scoops, champagne, pecking, kissing, smooching, tickling, chasing, swearing, beating, kicking. In short: Goose pimples and black eyes. And empty pockets of course.

There are people who organize their love life by the calendar. And there are people who vent their frustration by the calendar. There’s a third category too: merchants who crowd the calendar with a day for every customer to spend his/her money. These super salesmen can be forgiven. They also help the twin sisters selling roses on Bangalore’s Brigade Road.

The day after Valentine’s Day, lovers have memories and shop owners and restaurateurs the money. “There pas kya hai?” let’s ask Bal Thackeray and Pramod Muthalik. “Mere pas sanskriti hai,” they might chorus. Thank all the gods that the culture they are talking about remains with them. Let them keep it. Otherwise, we would have been a nation of test-tube babies, born out of love.

An endless love of one’s culture unites Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolph Hitler, Tackeray and Muthalik. They have another thing in common – a constipated look. Culture or constipation, fascism or frustration, these men make it a point to make life hell for their fellow-beings. Luckily the Shiv-Ram Sena chiefs are not military geniuses like their European counterparts.

Social psychologists still speculate over the impact of the missing testicle of Hitler and the atrophied penis of Napoleon on the course of world history. How better off would Karnataka’s lovebirds be had Muthalik found love at an appropriate age, some wonder. Union minister Renuka Chowdhary says he doesn’t know how to respect women because he is not married.

The bald man who formed an obscure outfit called Ram Sena is just a symbol. But where did so many (or so few) flock to his single-point agenda – “protection of our culture”. (It’s assumed that Indian culture doesn’t require its practitioners to beat up girls.) Frustration runs deep in society. Anybody can tap it.

Osama bin Laden, the terrorist without a constipated look, would be tapping it. The rapist-terrorists, who banned love and lust in Kashmir Valley, and their recruiters in Kerala and Karnataka would be tapping it. Even Prakash Karat and Mulayam Singh Yadav would be tapping it. Though Muthalik lacks the magnitude and finesse of these tappers, how long can he wait and watch. After all, he is a fan of the “revolutionary sadhwi” Pragya Singh Thakur, who masterminded the Malegaon blasts.

Sagarika Ghose was heard probing Muthalik about his “constituency”. The humble man, who reminded his detractors on TV that he “had the duty as a citizen”, wouldn’t know perhaps. The latest of the senas finds its foot soldiers with its barbaric agenda: ‘Ambush the pubs,’ and any boozer intimidated by the high costs and broad bouncers would barge in. ‘Kick out the boys,’ and any unsuccessful romeo would have his day. ‘Chase the girls,’ and any potential acid-attacker would join the party.

When even teenage boys have to resort to violence (or hidden mobile cameras) to satisfy their libido, why blame the potbellied men in khaki. They have been on the job before Thackeray or Muthalik were accused of moral policing. Despite all the pending cases and evading criminals, India’s police force (with special credit to Kerala Police) have been leaving no stone unturned to locate and sermonize young couples caught on beaches and parks. Sometimes they collect a small fee for the sermon. Some of them go on to give the terrified girl intimate lessons inside police chowkis.

Ram Sena is just echoing the official sentiments. Maybe the sainiks themselves, in their previous avatar, had been caught and brainwashed by the moralistic policemen. After attacking pubs in Mangalore and Bangalore, they have threatened to tie down with a mangal sutra any unmarried couple celebrating Valentine’s Day. Something knotty here. If they are marryable couples, why object to their togetherness. More over, if marriage is something any passing goon can solemnize, why such a fuzz about somebody’s marital status.

There’s hope. The Delhi High Court chided the policemen for registering a case of “indecency” against a married couple in the capital. It’s not a crime to kiss, finally. But there’s a catch. You must be married.

It’s a crime to love, it’s the time to hate. So be it, Justice Muthalik.