Meaning of Charles Sobhraj

FROM N.C.’S WRITINGS

The scandal of Charles Sobhraj’s escape from Delhi’s much-publicised Tihar Jail is a matter which must shake up all complacency about the state of the country’s security. A notorious international crook—a star target of the Interpol —has not only bolted in broad daylight from a prison supposed to be heavily guarded, but has left behind a trail that points to indiscipline and corruption of unbelievable magnitude.

This was not a sudden or totally unexpected happening. Reports of widespread irregularities within the precincts of the Tihar prison have been in circulation for years, particularly since the abnormal days of the Emergency. As for Charles Sobhraj, he always managed to get VIP treatment from the prison staff. His contact with the outside world was almost unrestricted: he became the virtual boss of the place with a number of jail officers eating out of his hand. Sobhraj could even maintain gainful contact with members of international mafia. Glossy magazines have published his interviews from prison, and a young woman reporter was engaged in the productive pursuit of writing a scintillating biography of this, the most colourful gangster in the world.

Charles Sobhraj’s escape after entertaining prison-guards and officers with delicious cookies properly drugged, sounds like a fairy-tale version of a very sordid business. It should hardly require the government to wait for the report of the investigating authority to realise that this gang of big-money drug smugglers were regularly bribing with impunity a good part of the prison authorities. One wonders if the magistrates found to be letting off on bail such dangerous characters are just simpletons or something else. For, one of the narcotic smugglers, a British national, nabbed at Palam airport and released on bail last month, was found to be having unimpeded access to Sobhraj.

Tihar is not just a solitary exception. Corruption and complicity with the underworld have became a feature of Indian prisons. The only thing that one can say about Tihar is that the misdoings within its high walls have been taking place right under the nose of the Centre. At the other end, we find the same prison regime has been ruthless and barbarous to the poor and those who strive to be on the side of the poor. The bestial torture, inhuman atrocities—remember the Bhagalpur blinding—that the very same prison authorities perpetrate on those who could not and would not bribe them, brings out, in a nutshell, the ghastly inequity that marks the very running of the administration today. Charles Sobhraj with his long record of crime is helped to get away while an underfed undertrial, presumed to be innocent, is condemned to languish in prison for years as justice in this country is becoming more and more a protracted business. Corruption and inhumanity are not mutually exclusive, they go hand in hand.

This is true not only in Tihar and the hundreds of prisons all over the country. It is there for us to see everybody in this very society we live, in the democracy in which we function. The venality of the affluent mocks at the cruelty and penury of the under-privileged, those who constitute the overwhelming majority in this country. With all the tall talk of social justice that often rents the air, how much thought is given to the spectre of de-humanisation that seems to overtake us today in this country? The disparity between profession and practice is getting wider and wider with every passing day.

When a person raised to the eminence of a Chief Minister dares to be involved in the corrupt practice of tampering with University examination results to favour his own daughter, this may be held up as a touching example of paternal affection, but can it just be dismissed as the stupidity of a foolish politician? If Shivajirao Nilangekar has had to pay the price and step down from Chief Ministership despite the powerful factional backing of Vasantrao Patil, it does not follow that Rajiv’s Maharashtra stable has been cleansed. Governor Kona Prabhakara Rao’s attempts at hushing up the Chief Minister’s scandal can hardly be permitted. And what about some of the luminaries in Rajiv’s own Council of Ministers? Can Shiv Shankar, for instance, lay claim to be even a distant relation of any Mr Clean? The values such worthies subscribe to are not very different from those of Charles Sobhraj.

Corruption in a polity is not just a moral issue. It is inextricably connected with questions of security and integrity of the nation. One often hears of rampant smuggling across the frontiers. This may be a profitable peace-time occupation. But the smuggling channel also turns over convoys of arms—arms not merely for the non-political dacoit but for highly-motivated political cadres of seccessionists and foreign infiltrators. Across the flat plains of Punjab, soaked by the five rivers, comes the Khalistani secessionist with all the back-up provided by General Zia’s apparatus. And through the difficult terrain of Kashmir’s beautiful valley comes the Pak infiltrator masquerading as a devout funda-mentalist. Most of these species thrive on the corruption at the frontier. A Coomer Narain or a Rama Swarup may just be the funny-looking character in a theatre of the absurd, but such antics do not prove that there are no agents lurking in this vast country of ours who are engaged in the serious business of destabilisation. Despite all the precautions taken after Operation Bluestar, Indira Gandhi five months later, fell at the hands of her security guards. With all the labours of the judicial investigation commission, the truth may not be out so soon. The only truth one can go by is not that she was the victim of any lack of security but of a security system that was not foolproof against contamination of secessionist forces, internal and external. It would be unwise to look upon this tragedy as the handiwork of a bundle of religious fanatics, and there is no reason to be certain that external agencies would not be engaged in exploiting such fanatics. And in the final analysis, the incompetence that provides the opening for such cowardly acts, is bred by the corrosion that has overtaken the body politic.

Finance Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh has asserted in Parliament that the recent tax raids on big business houses were planned on the basis of “cold facts” and supported by “confidential internal documents” of those big guns of the corporate sector. There is no reason to disbelieve the Finance Minister—at least the public at large would applaud him. At the same time, one wonders if this line could be pursued under a system in which the administrative set-up from the police upward, act in large measure in concert with the very same business houses. As corruption and indiscipline have seeped into the bureaucratic system, no purge for purity can be sustained for long. In the prevailing environ-ment, Vishwanath Pratap Singh’s crusade has the danger of petering out or reducing itself to selective picking of business houses that would not conform to the demands of the present establishment.

Cuts, commissions and kickbacks have become household words in our political vocabulary today. Petty contractors to magnum-size multinational agents strut about uninhibited in the precincts of our politics. Big money passing is no longer a dirty occupation; rather it has become the wherewithal for acquiring status symbol. If our ancient values are outmoded as many today seem to think, what new value-system have we created? No society thrives in a vacuum. The absence of a value-system brings in the corrosion of the system itself.

Charles Sobhraj has left behind much food for thought—not just the poisoned birthday cake for his jailors.

(Mainstream, March 22, 1986)