By Sushil Kutty
The circus continues to rock. From deep inside Mumbai, it’s like the Centre’s nowhere in the picture. But push aside the facade like you do a curtain and the door opens to a vista wide open. You’ll spot the footprints of the Centre as clearly as fish in unmuddied waters. The Centre’s representative in Mumbai is the CBI and while the CBI isn’t doing anything that’s apparent, worth its reputation or mandate, that’s exactly what it’s doing: Coolly sitting and watching and not moving a finger or a toe. It’s not investigating. The top investigating agency was brought in to investigate Sushant Singh Rajput’s death and get to the bottom of it: Was Sushant Singh Rajput murdered or did he kill himself, a little matter of suicide?
But what’s on view? A seemingly comatose CBI laid out in the attic! Hidden from the eye, out of sight except to the few who sent the CBI to the concrete jungle to sift through the debris and ferret out the secret of a mystery death. Has the CBI arrived at a conclusion? No. Definitely not. Confirming the view that there’s something amiss! What could be that, and why; will somebody care to tell? The CBI, the MHA — Amit Shah?
The silence is weird. Deafening would be the cliche. But it does not stick. The CBI is playing a game and it’s got to do with a game-plan of the Centre. Of course, that means the BJP, which has quite a few chestnuts in the fire. From the Bihar assembly elections to putting the Maharashtra government of the day in all sorts of trouble by fishing in muddied waters, see what it lands! If luck favours a big fish, the small fries already in the net, catch that won’t sell.
The fact is amidst all the rancour and squabbling and fighting in TV studios, Devendra Fadnavis and Sanjay Raut met, not to gawk at each other but to hobnob, something which comes second nature to politicians of all hues. The former chief minister of Maharashtra and Shiv Sena’s gadfly did not disclose what they hobnobbed about though the grapevine is full of hints it has to do with the SSR death and the Disha Salian deaths and talk of the involvement neck-deep of a top Sena operative in the deaths; a Sena blue-eyed boy who is also a minister in the MVA Government.
It’s all twisted. Messed up. The plot is so thick it’s impossible to know what’s in the stew. Opaque. And because that’s how it is, speculation and rumour mongering have taken over the narrative. There is a bunch of what’s called “SSRians” spearheading the ‘Justice for Sushant” movement that has taken hold and has roots all over India with the media taking sides for TRP and more. So much so, the media war intensified and has turned into a spectacle!
That’s presenting it mildly. Actually, the media war has become cannibalistic, with rival TV channels feeding on each other’s crimes laid bare. There’s the Republic against India Today and there’s lots of Zee for Zing and 18 news items all at once. All that’s lacking is an item number though there’s enough of Bollywood and its top divas giving masala to the 24/7 pay per view spectacle. Besides, to swoon the Aam Aadmi, there’s enough marijuana and hash to stone a rapacious dinosaur if one stepped out of the Jurassic Park!
That doesn’t mean everybody is stoned. The Mumbai Police is actively in the game; ‘playing, some say, a murky game which Scotland Yard will refuse to participate in for all the bobbies in London! The Mumbai Police, say police historians, is but a shadow of its glorious past. Sushant Singh Rajput’s death has killed honesty and left a void in the force.
The Mumbai Police, it is alleged, is in MVA’s pocket and it’s not for small change. The 24 Carat reality is that Mumbai Police’s reputation is in tatters, the torn pieces not big enough to make even a handkerchief! To say that the police force anywhere is a force of unity is to fool oneself. Police everywhere is in political camps and if the current Mumbai Police chief is said to be in cahoots with MVA, there are officers who owe allegiance to the BJP and the Congress, another section of cops solidly in the NCP camp. What’s glaringly obvious is that the Mumbai Police is piling up its mistakes and non-performance, losing the perception battle. Led by the lacklustre Commissioner of Police Parambir Singh, the police force has been pulled into murky politics, blatantly and brazenly and neglecting its core duties.
Till up to Sushant’s death, Mumbai Police was doing a great job in battling the Covid-19 pandemic. But after Sushant’s death, the police soft-peddled and aligned with those declaring the death a suicide. In fact, it was the Mumbai Police which first christened it “suicide” and tried everything in dubious book thereafter to write its final chapter. One that spelled complete and total surrender to the powers that be. So much so, Mumbai Police’s cloak of confidence was torn every time a media channel questioned its motives and its affiliation.
Today, as we stand, sit or squat, the Mumbai Police is in an endgame that will leave it no choice but to go for a complete and total overhaul. The Mumbai Police has inveigled itself into a no-holds-barred media war, targeting one television channel while openly aligning with another. It’s a sad place. The average Mumbai denizen has lost confidence and trust in Mumbai Police.
Whether it’s about drugs in Bollywood, ‘murder’ investigations, or dirty media wars, the Mumbai Police is seen to be playing dirty, neglecting its core duties of maintaining law and order and upholding the law, ensuring that the rule of law prevails. As this piece is being written, the Mumbai Police is sinking more and more in the quicksand that it has willy-nilly walked into. When another chapter is added to the History of Mumbai Police Commissioner of Police, Parambir Singh will not be able to hold his own with his illustrious predecessors.
But, to be transparent and real, let’s confess that police and bureaucracy are not paragons of justice and uprightness. Whether it’s the Mumbai Police or the Uttar Pradesh Police, which enacted a midnight cremation coup for which several policemen were suspended all are in it together. As for the bureaucracy, the Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation tore down the residence of an actress for political reasons and the district magistrate of Hathras did everything in his power to destroy evidence in the case of alleged gangrape and murder of a 19-year-old. We live in troubled times, and it’s got nothing to do with Covid-19. There are other virulent viruses at play, more dangerous than the coronavirus. (IPA Service)