JUDGES ARE NOT LORDS OVER THE REPUBLIC

Posted on January 23, 2009 by Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Every Indian is proud of the fact that he / she belongs to the Republic of India. But every patriotic Indian is embarrassed over the fact that this Republic stands synonymous with contradiction and corruption. This is because; post-independence India has failed to honor the wishes of its founding fathers.

The father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi, had expressly wished that in free India, the Governments must keep in mind the poorest person while drafting the Plans for the country. His followers reduced his wishes to mere wishful thinking. When Congressmen are busy in competition to become factotums of Sonia Gandhi, why should we think that they could at any point of time have given importance to Mahatma Gandhi? History cannot but say that the Congress Government that stepped into power immediately after independence would be remembered for two things: one, for failure to save Gandhiji from the assassin and two, for declaring the Communist Party of India illegal so that in Constitution making, the propertied class should face no problem in safe guarding its own interest.

Giving vent to his deep dissatisfaction over failure to protect poor peoples’ interest in the Constitution, in his concluding address to the Constituent Assembly, Dr. B.R.Ambedkar had noted, “On 26th January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradiction. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic rights, we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man and one vote, one value. In our social and economic rights we shall by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny one man, one value.” (Constituent Assembly Debates, Vol.XI, p.979)

This inequality, as analyzed by Shibanikinkar Chaube in ‘Constituent Assembly of India’ (PPH, 1973), was caused by “the pressure of the propertied class”.

When President Rajendra Prasad was to admit that “the defects are inherent in the situation in the country”(Constituent Assembly Debates, Vol.XI, p.993), Dr. Ambedkar had expressed serious doubts over longevity of the Republic. “We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this Assembly has so laboriously built up”, he had warned.

But Governments of India have never heeded to his warning as a result of which India has already become two Indias.

Political equality has kept the geographical India in tact, but economic inequality has brought majority of Indians look at a handful of Indians as of a different India, best captioned in apolitical popular slogans like “Tere India mahan, mere Bharat pareshan”, which roughly means, your India may be great, but my Bharat is in turmoil.

We must try to stop this rising feeling of two Indias. We must cast off hypocrisy to admit that Ambedkar’s warning not heeded to, the victims of inequality have started to “blow up the structure of political democracy” that the founding fathers of Indian Republic had “so laboriously built up”. Terminating Naxals by military guns or using State terror to silent the oppressed poor will not close up the gap between these two Indias. Elimination of economic inequality will do.

But how has economic inequality become so massive? A man who was working for a paltry sum of Rs.300/- only per month three decades prior to his death died as the owner of around Rs.70,000 Crores and the luminaries of this country beginning from the Prime Minister to newspaper editors, instead of telling the nation as to where from and how he earned this massive money, cried over his death like widows cry over the pyres of their husbands!

This syndrome has encouraged the mafia. And, in our country, where Laws are so rampant, no mafia could have grown without backing of the Law Enforcement Authorities (LEA).

This gives us a sad feeling of black sheep presence in our LEAs that includes also the Judiciary.

It is not for nothing that a demand for disclosure of properties of Judges is so constant.

Many a judges even of higher judiciary have exhibited such conduct that not only the Chief Justice or Collegiums of Judges have felt the need for action against them, but also the general public has started looking at Judges askance. Peoples have started believing the Cinema depictions that behind every high profile mafia, there must be a Judge!

In such circumstances, it is better for the republic if property-list of every public functionary including the members of Judiciary, whosoever draws salary from taxpayer’s money is disclosed.

To avoid embarrassment over disclosure on demand, the property list of every public functionary should be authentically posted in the Internet in the portals of the institution he or she works with.

The Chief Justice of India Hon’ble Justice K G Balakrishnan in a recent response has disapproved the necessity of property disclosure in respect of senor Judges.

It is really indecent to ask the Judges to disclose their properties list. It connotes to expressing no confidence on Judges. Ethically it is not proper.

Personally I may stand with the views of the CJI as to me, Judiciary being the last refuge of our peoples, Judges should never be subjected to peoples asking for their properties list.

But as India is crumbling into two Indias, as observed supra, it is imperative that to equip peoples for defeating plutocracy and for putting leash on corruption that has so far served plutocracy and savagely widened the gap between economically unequal peoples of the country and to save the motherland from the “contradiction” so correctly pointed out by Dr. Ambedkar, the Judges should post their properties list in the respective portals of the High Courts and the Supreme Court for anybody to see that without indulging in demands to know of their properties under the Right To Information Act.

It should be appropriate for the Judges to appreciate that notwithstanding all the respects, we the general public of India unambiguously pay them, they are not and cannot be the Lords over the Republic.

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THE CABINET MUST NOT MUSS UP ORISSA

Posted on June 8, 2008 by Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
The following mail has been posted to Chief Minister Navin Patnaik and his cabinet colleagues :

It would be followed up.

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CHIEF MINISTER MUST STOP THE DRAMA DIALOGUE AND ACT

Posted on June 8, 2008 by Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Law will take its own course – is a dialogue that always emits from the lips of Chief Minister Navin Patnaik whenever the drama of his administration unveils a new scene of felony against our people.

The people have enough tolerated this idiotic dialogue because of their magnanimity. But they won’t any more.

He had no political experience when he was posted as Chief Minister by Biju’s discredited barrel-bearers, who, sans a mask, had no chance of entering into the power corridor in post-Biju Orissa. Therefore the phrase “Law will take its own course” was taken as his ploy to escape immediate responsibility pending action. But with passage of time, it was clear that he had no inclination to take any appropriate action against any illegality and he had developed the habit of saying “law will take its own course’ as a trick to cover up all illegalities.

It is a shame that he is unable to understand what the law says. Umpteen times, in these pages, we have shown instances of his inability to understand the laws; Ardhendu Sarangi’s case being the latest.

In my last discussion in this matter, I have shown how Sarangi obstructed medico-legal steps of the on-duty doctors of capital hospital in order to suppress the criminal offense perpetrated in the privacy of his residence. From tampering with the cuprous delicti to concealing the crime commissioned, every punishable aspect of his criminal conduct has been exposed therein.

The apprehension expressed therein that cultivation of a surrogate offender in exchange of money for saving their skins by the Sarangis might not be ruled out has almost come true as the man, arrested by Police, has disclosed how he succumbed to allurement of job and cash offered by the Sarangis in claiming responsibility for the offense he never committed. A TV channel report having carried this disclosure, local newspapers have made headlines thereon and though 3 days have elapsed, neither Sarangis nor the police have dared to deny it.

So, the Sarangis, particularly Ardhendu is guilty of concealment of the crime committed by him or any or all of his family, individually or collectively, in the guarded privacy of his residence on May 21, 2008 against life of class IV employee Ramesh Sethi, who was illegally pressed on domestic works. He is guilty further of keeping the crime concealed by cowing down on-duty doctors of capital hospital and for having intervened in discharge of their medico-legal duties. If the disclosure hinted to above is not incorrect, Sarangi is guilty of cultivating a surrogate offender to conceal the crime and to derail the legal investigation.

Chief Minister Navin Patnaik can save his own skin if he peruses the legal position discussed in these pages in this specific matter and, being the Police minister himself, initiate action against the Police Officer who has deliberately sloughed over Section 39 of Cr.P.C. and relevant sections of IPC as yet and collaborated with Sarangi in projecting a surrogate offender in an attempt to protect the real offender in this case.

During last eight years in power he has not been able to learn Oriya even when non-Oriya officers posted to Orissa are finding it easy to learn this beautiful language within two to three months of their posting. Therefore I have my doubts on his ability to learn. Whether or not he is able to learn the law in this case is a matter for him to prove for which it would be desirable on his part to discard the “law will take its own course” dialogue and act.

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WHY MURLI DEORA WAS HAPPILY LAUGHING WHILE HIKING PETROL PRICE?

Posted on June 6, 2008 by Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Most of Indians are crying sans any escape because of the unprecedented hike in oil price. Lest this helplessness transforms into wrath in the ballot boxes in the coming elections, the speaking mask of Congress hypocrisy, Sonia Gandhi, has asked the State Governments run by her Subedars to lessen the burden of the hike on the peoples of their respective States by reducing provincial sales tax on oil under their jurisdictions.

We have marked Man Mohan Singh’s meretricious tears when he was trying to be stoical while saying the nation that though he knew that the hike would certainly badly affect the people, he had no other way to mitigate the losses oil companies in India were facing in view of price rise in international arena.

But why Murli Deora, Indian Minister of Petroleum, was so effusively laughing while going to tell the Press of the hike? Was he laughing at the misfortune of the people of India? Or was he inadvertently reflecting the laughs elsewhere efflorescing? Should the real reasons of his laugh be known, the real reasons of hike in gasoline price could also be known.

But India is a country where the peoples do not know where the shoe pinches.

The peoples could not know why Sonia Gandhi, the most material witness to Indira Gandhi’s last breath was not interrogated in the matter of what had she seen in Indira’s murder.

They could not know why Rajiv Gandhi rewarded R.K.Dhawan by appointing him to the most powerful position in his regime, instead of punishing him after the Judicial Commission enquiring into the Indira’s assassination had unambiguously observed that the needle of suspicion was strongly pointing at him only.

They could not know why Man Mohan Singh in his earlier avatar of RBI Chief had allowed BCCI to open a branch at Mumbai in spite of strong objections from India’s external intelligence agency RAW on the ground of its suspected role as a conduit of ISI, CIA in nefarious deals like drug money laundering and terrorist funding etc.

They could not know why Vajpayee disregarded all democratic norms to retain George Fernandez as Defense Minister after reinstating him in the same position that he had relinquished on threadbare exposure of dubious defense deals.

They could not know wherefrom Vajpayee’s blue-eyed boy Pramod Mahajan, a whole time saffron worker with scant source of income, had amassed more than two thousand crores of Rupees by the time a family internecine attempt to grab portions of that illicit money extinguished his life in his brother’s barrel.

They could not know why Man Mohan Singh government ordered public prosecutor Lilian Delgado, India’s lawyer in the case seeking extradition of Ottavio Quattrocchi, to withdraw the appeal it had preferred in the Supreme Court of Argentina against the lower court order and thereby set him free.

They could not know why the CBI kept mum when Sten Lindstrom, chief Swedish investigator in the Bofors case revealed that it had met him “for just 20 minutes in 20 years” while summing up his impression in words like, “the CBI was just fooling the Indian people all this while”.

They could not know why the government kept mum when explaining as to why the CBI is unable to catch Quattrocchi, former CBI Joint Director BR Lal said, “the government is who controls the CBI. Now a servant can’t go against the master.”

Lal’s statement being a stark indicator to involvement of Prime Ministers from V.P.Singh to A.B.Vajpayee to Man Mohan Singh in covering up the offence against India by the so-called Gandhi Parivar and Quattrocchi, the peoples of this country could not as yet know as to why these Prime Ministers from V.P.Singh to Man Mohan Singh have tried to cover up the offence.

In such a country where traitors get all protection, who can know and how, why Murli Deora was in effusive laughs when he was going to announce the worst ever hike in petrol price?

A report in the global edition of New York Times, International Herald Tribune, says, citing to “the most recent figures from the U.S. Department of Energy” that Gasoline prices varying across India, consumers will pay about 50 rupees a liter or about $4.45 a gallon – well above the average $3.79 a gallon average that U.S. drivers are paying. So, people in poorer India are to pay more to the profit coffers of petrol companies than what the consumers in the rich country USA are paying!

When people in USA think that price of oil hike is due to war, PM Singh wants Indians to believe that the hike is because of “global” hike in price!

It cannot be ruled out that a few oil monopolists in Saudi and their business partners in USA are eyeing for even more profits. They just do it gradually as governments like that in India are not reluctant to financially cripple their own countrymen in order to pave ways for companies to fetch more profit as per their own designs.

But the real truth can come out if petroleum minister Murli Deora tells us honestly as to why he was so effusively laughing when his announcement of oil price hike was sure to push every honest Indian into financial perils; if, of course he was not laughing at India’s commons.

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ORISSA WRITERS’ RAUCOUS VOICE RATTLES THE CAPITAL: IS IT POLITICAL?

Posted on May 31, 2008 by Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

A distinguished section of Orissa’s men of letters has raised acrimonious objection to appointment of Husain Ravi Gandhi as President of Orissa Sahitya Akademi. He is a politician, now in Navin Patnaik’s camp and by appointing him as the President, the State Government has politically polluted the Akademi, they allege.

A look into the list of last Presidents of the Akademi reveals that many politicians who had no contribution to Oriya literature had occupied this Chair. Orissa’s writers who are now very vociferous against Husain’s appointment had kept their mouth shut at that time.

Not only they had kept their mouth shut, but also they had and even now they have kept themselves engaged in competing with each other to raise unbound slogans of praise in favor of the man who first set the precedence of appointing a personal political factotum sans any literatural merit as President of Orissa Sahitya Akademi. That man was Biju Patnaik.

Biju Patnaik, whose only marked disdain, when in power, was for probity, was the first Chief Minister under whose rule political pollution of the Sahitya Akademi had begun. He had appointed his political factotum Santos Sahoo as President of the Akademi on 23 September1963 and Sahoo had continued as such till 2 September1966.

The writers who are now raising voice against Husain’s appointment should explain as to why had they remained silent over Sahoo’s appointment.

In a signed article in Sambad, Prof. Nityananda Satapathy has today alleged that Husain is less than a third grade writer.

Who is he to give gradation to a writer and where from he got this carte blanche is not known to any. But it is known to everybody that Sahoo was not a writer and Satapathy had never objected to his placement as President of the Akademi.

All the writers beginning from veterans to the sophomores who have threatened to come down to streets in protest against Husain’s appointment have contributed to this climate of sycophancy by siding with Biju Patnaik through out.

What Biju had done by appointing his political factotum Sahoo as President of the Sahitya Akademi in 1963, his son Navin has done the same thing by appointing Husain in same post in 2008.

If the Oriya writers have never condemned Biju within these forty-five years for the wrong precedence he created in1963 in appointment of Akademi President, a precedence that has been followed many a times such as Sadashiv Tripathy (Chief Minister) self appointing himself as President of Sahitya Akademi on 3 September 1966, Nandini Satapathy appointing Gangadhar Mohapatra on 20 October 1975, Biju again through Nilamoni Rautray appointing Biswabhusan Harichandan on 26 June1977 etc and etc, why should they now condemn Navin for following his father’s footprint?

These fellows who have no qualms in grabbing whatever opportunity the Akademi throws to their advantage have never wanted or worked for the correct writing even of the history of the Akademi.

Except official projection that the Akademi was established in 1957, nothing is made available to the public about how and by whom with what aims and objects it was started.

People of Orissa do not know when it had died and who had caused that death. People do not know, what happened to its original purpose, to its original Constitution.

All that is available shows that on obliteration of the original Sahitya Akademi, a stick of tricks to beat down Orissa’s authors to acquiesce into official authority was conceived and created by Harekrushna Mahtab and his cronies in 1970 and the original Sahitya Akademi was misappropriated by them and was registered as a society under the Registration of Societies Act, 1860 on 25 July1970.

I deliberately stress on misappropriation of the Akademi by Mahtab and his cronies in view of the preamble of the Constitution on which the Akademi now stands.

It says, “Whereas it is considered expedient to establish a State Organisation to work actively for the development of Oriya literature and to set high literary standards to foster and co-ordinate literary activities and to promote through them all, the cultural unity of the State, we the following persons, hereby resolve to establish and operate the “Orissa Sahitya Akademi”.

Nowhere it is indicated that the Orissa Sahitya Akademi, established in 1957 was getting registered as a Society by the new office-bearers comprising Mahtab etc; but the preamble noted above has clearly declared that Mahtab and his companions took steps for “establishment” of the Akademi in 1970.

Therefore I stress that the original Orissa Sahitya Akademi was misappropriated by Mahtab and his group in 1970.

This group had formulated and registered the Constitution of the present Akademi that stipulates under Article 3 that there shall be only four Officers of the Akademi and they shall be the President. The Vice-President, the Treasurer and the Secretary. Artcles 4 to 7 of this Constitution stipulate that the State Government shall appoint all these four Officers. But nowhere there is any mention of any necessity of any of the officers being men or women of letters. So the State Government can appoint any idiot to any of the four offices of the Akademi if it so likes.

So, the question now is: who are the writers of Orissa to object to appointment of anybody to any post of the Akademi – President, Vice-President, Treasurer and Secretary – if they have no objection to the above provisions?

I have mentioned above how Biju had appointed his political factotum Santos Sahoo as President of Orissa Sahitya Akademi in 1963 and how Sadashiv Tripathy being the Chief Minister had self-appointed himself as its President in 1966.

If therefore, after R.N.Singhdeo headed a coalition government with Mahtab’s Jana Congress, it was thought prudent to kill that politically polluted Akademi and to give birth to a totally new Akademi with a new Constitution and to register the same under the Registration of Societies Act in order to add legality to the set-up as well as to the said Constitution, it should have developed as a democratic body of writers with elimination of every scope of any of its positions going to politicians or non-writers in future.

But that never happened.

Mahtab and his cronies willfully killed the purpose behind reincarnation of the Sahitya Akademi.

Ramakanta Rath was then the Secretary of Education & Cultural Affairs Department under Government of Orissa. He along with Sri B.C. Nayak constituted the Governing Body under presidentship of Mahtab. The other members, who constituted the General Body, were H.N.Das Mahapatra, the then Director of Cultural Affairs, Dr. S.C.Dash, the then Head of Department of Political science of Utkal University, Prof. G.B.Dhal, the then HoD of Oriya in Ravenshaw College and Sri B.N.Kar, the then Editor of Matrubhumi.

None of these fellows was elected by writers of Orissa to form the General Body of the new incarnation of Orissa Sahitya Akademi. This body was clamped on the peoples of Orissa. All of them were handpicked by Mahtab who was considered the Super Chief Minister of Orissa as R.N. Singhdeo was dependant on him for survival in Chief Minister’s chair. He picked up his cronies and formed the General Body and framed the Constitution and made it registered.

He was naturally shown as the President of the Akademi.

But how was he shown?

Not as a writer or organizer of literary events. He was shown as a “Political and Social Worker” by occupation.

So the new incarnation of the Akademi commenced its activities with a President who was so appointed not as a writer or man of letters, but as a “Political and Social Worker”.

Did the writers of Orissa object to that at that time? No.

Why didn’t they object to appointment of a man as President of the Sahitya Akademi in the capacity of a “Political and Social Worker” instead of as a Writer or a man of Letters?

It was simply because the writers were eager to please Mahtab with an eye on Bishuva Award that his Prajatantra Prachar Samity was granting. They were also eager to please Mahtab in order to earn favored treatment to their respective writings in Jhankar, the literary journal Mahtab was publishing.

What moral or legal rights then these writers have to object to Husain’s appointment?

It is worth mention that since the day the present Orissa Sahitya Akademi came into existence, instead of acting as conscience keepers of the state, most of Orissa’s writers have preferred to act like sycophants of persons in office. That is helping them in obtaining awards and in clearing obstacles from the path of their works entering into the arena of Book business named after Raja Ram Mohan Roy.

Due to this spiritual deterioration of Orissa authors, they have tolerated consecration of Giridhari Gamang, Hemananda Biswal and Navin Ptanaik in the President chair of Orissa Sahitya Akademi.

Either fear for persons in power or greed for awards has made contemporary writers of Orissa so spineless that they are not daring to call a spade a spade and taking advantage of this, agents of caste apartheid in Orissa are misusing official machineries to keep the historical poet Jaya Dev buried under legends so that his socio-political creed sic passim in his famous female centric love songs that had led Orissa to cast aside caste-culture and strengthen Buddhist tenets in the citadel of Sri Jagannatha remain obstructed forever from the present generation. Writers have a right to bring the right thing to public knowledge. But Orissa’s writers have remained too docile to go against persons who never want the peoples to know the right thing.

When this has been the trend so far, why all on a sudden they have raised a raucous voice against appointment of Husain as President of the Akademi? Particularly when this year is the last year of Navin Patnaik in power this leg?

I smell politics.

Navin’s misrule has so brutally dragged down Orissa to despondency that authors being sensitive people are no more able to tolerate. Their subconscious wrath was in search for a point of ventilation that the Akademi appointments have provided. Now one may look at it as a development that portends end of Navin misrule.

Politics has also its poisonous fang concealed under the writers’ emerging stir in Orissa. Prof. Satapathy, in the article hinted to above, has sharpened his attack on the ground that appointment of Husain is an act of appeasement to minority community. It is a shame that an author and a former Professor is looking into the matter in a communal color.

So, are the anti-Muslim communalists eager to take advantage of the disadvantage caused to Orissa Sahitya Akademi by its total bureaucratization?

In the circumstances, this is not surprising.

.

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POLICE PROSECUTES PRADIP; BUT PROTECTS IAS OFFICER SARANGI

Posted on May 30, 2008 by Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Police has started prosecution against Pradip, who alleged attempted to murder Class IV employee Ramesh Sethi in the residence of IAS officers Ardhendu and Madhur Sarangi on May 21. He has been remanded to judicial custody, as Police did not prefer any further investigation.

After committing the crime, Pradip had allegedly gone underground. Police obtained information on his whereabouts from his family and arrested him from Chennai where he was staying with one of his friends. He did not try to escape and readily came with Bhubaneswar Police and divulged why and how he assaulted Sethi.

Though the episode looks like a stage-managed drama, the Police have the liberty to close the chapter in respect to him because Pradip having declared to have perpetrated the crime, the Police, given its wont, cannot be expected to stretch the issue any further.

To keep the society safe from scoundrels, the Police in this case should do better by trying to find out if Pradip is acting or not as a cover. And, to assure us that he is not acting as a cover, Police should place before the public the details of his disposition and behavioral antecedents including instances, if any, of his brutality flared up in so sudden fury as we are being made to see in this instant case.

When for money, man is parting with his ancestral land; when for money, mother is parting with her beloved baby; when for money, a Prime Minister parts with probity; when for money, an IAS officer acts as a loyal dog of private industry, an IPS officer acts as a criminals’ conduit, a Commander carries out espionage for the enemy; when for money, a husband betrays his wife, a woman takes extra-conjugal sperm to become a surrogate mother, nobody can say for sure that Pradip is not parting with his innocence to become a cover.

To eliminate any such possible emergence of doubt the Police should come out with the details of criminal antecedents or blind-in-rage activities of Pradip. Whether or not they think it prudent would be known later.

But what the Police must immediately do is to honor the spirit of Section 39 of the Code of Criminal Procedure as discussed in these pages earlier and act against the IAS officer who has, sans any justifiable personal excuse, not informed the nearest Magistrate or the Police Officer of the commission of crime against life of Sethi in the privacy of his residence but on the other hand, has tampered with the cuprous delicti by removing the victim from the spot of crime.

Action against Ardhendu is a necessity on the further ground that as an IAS officer he cowed down the on-duty Medical Officers of the casualty wing of the Capital Hospital not to inform the Police of anything about Sethi. The casualty M.O. had admitted Sethi to medical care by registering him for treatment vide Outdoor Registration No. 9715 dated 21 May 2008. The Casualty Outdoor Register shows that Sethi was brought to the Hospital by Ardhendu Sarangi, IAS at 9.08 A.M. Sethi was drenched in blood, with grievous injury in the scalp and was profusely vomiting. It was urgent for admission in the indoor and simultaneously it was urgent to inform the Police. The Police has its outpost in the Capital Hospital adjoining the casualty outdoor. As the on-duty Doctor was making a requisition for the Police, Sarangi intervened and insisted that the Doctor should desist from calling the Police. He then asked the on-duty Doctors to desist from admitting Sethi for the indoor and further compelled them to desist from showing the seriousness of the injury on records. Accordingly, on the outdoor register a simple scalp injury was mentioned. Then before any chance transmission to the Police outpost takes place, he whisked out Sethi from the observation table and sped away with the man who was in coma condition. As records reveal, Sethi was admitted in the SCB medical College in a coma condition caused by severe head injury.

The Doctors on duty at the Casualty outdoor of the Capital Hospital who were cowed down and restrained by Ardhendu from discharging their legitimate duty to the severely injured Sethi at the relevant time were Dr. Snehalata Nath, Dr. Bhavani Shankar Bal and Dr. Saraswati Das.

How does the Police react to this?

And, how does the Chief Minister Navin Patnaik, who always says that law will take its own course, react to this evident reluctance of the Police to activate Laws against this heinous offense against administration of Law?

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IF IAS OFFICER ARDHENDU SARANGI IS NOT THE ASSAULTER, PROSECUTE HIM IN THE SPIRIT OF SEC 39 OF THE CODE OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

Posted on May 26, 2008 by Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

The Code of Criminal Procedure is the one instrument that the Law enforcement authorities cannot discard or disobey. It gives the authority required by the authorities to act against criminals.

At Section 39 (1), it makes mandatory for every citizen to inform the “nearest Magistrate or Police Officer” of occurrence of certain offenses. Let us see what it says.

It says, “Every person, aware of the commission of, or of the intention of any other person to commit, any offence punishable under any of the following sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) (as categorized under Clauses from i to xii) shall, in the absence of any personal excuse, the burden of proving which excuse shall lie upon the person so aware, forthwith give information to the nearest Magistrate or Police Officer of such commission or intention”.

Before going to the relevant Clause, it would be better to appreciate the emphasis given on this section. The word shall here is absolutely mandatory. It makes it compulsory for every individual to forthwith give information to the nearest Magistrate or Police Officer the moment he or she is aware of commission of a crime or any other person’s intention to commit a crime.

The crime comprising the mischief of this section is of various types indicated in the clauses from i to xii like offenses against the State coming under Clause (i); offenses against public tranquility as shown under Clause (ii) etc. The offenses affecting life are covered under Clause (v).

An offense affecting the life of Class IV public servant Ramesh Sethi has been committed under the residential privacy of IAS Officer Ardhendu Sarangi. Either Ardhendu himself or any of his family members who share residential privacy with him has committed the crime. This is so suspected, because he has not informed the authorities of any other person even though the crime is committed within the secured privacy of his residence.

It is he who took Sethi under coma from his residence to the Capital Hospital, Bhubaneswar and from there to the S.C.B. Medical College Hospital, Cuttack.

Had he no ulterior motive, he should have kept the records straight and facilitated operation of criminal justice system by informing forthwith the nearest Magistrate or the nearest Police Officer.

There is no Magistrate so far on records to have pressed the police to action in this case on Sarangi’s information. This means, Sarangi, though aware of the crime commissioned, has not forthwith informed the nearest Magistrate. On the other hand, the nearest police officer i.e. officer-in-charge of Capital Police Station is on records to have said that the only information received by police in the matter is from a man who does not reside in the residence of Sarangis.

Now when Police knows that Ardhendu was aware of the commission of the crime from the moment it occurred, specifically as it was he who took the victim in coma condition to the Hospital(s), why have they not initiated penal actions against him for having willfully concealed the fact from the lawful authorities?

Taking plea of personal excuse is also not permissible to Ardhendu.

The law is very clear and specific. It has stipulated that “the burden of proving” the justification of the “excuse” that prevented from forthwith informing the nearest Magistrate or the nearest Police Officer, “shall lie upon the person so aware”. When the word “shall” is mandatory, unavoidability of the “excuse” must have to be “proved” by the person concerned to escape punishment for having not informed the nearest Magistrate / Police officer “forthwith”.

And, where the justification of the “excuse” may be “proved”? Only in a court of Law competent under the Evidence Act.

So until the justification of an “excuse” is “proved” in a competent Court of Law, Police must continue to prosecute the person who despite being aware of commission of a crime has not informed the nearest Magistrate / Police officer.

In view of this legal stipulation, the Police is duty bound to prosecute Ardhendu Sarangi and all the members of his family individually and collectively for having stayed away from informing the nearest Magistrate or the nearest Police Officer of commissioning of the crime, in due deference to the spirit of Section 39 of the Cr.P.C.

On the other hand, the so called FIR from a persona nongrata that the Police has haphazardly entertained in this case, informs that he saw a man known as Pradip Nayak who works also in Ardhendu’s residence along with Sethi, was walking away from Ardhendu’s compound after assaulting the victim with a spade.

Now, if an iota to credence could be given to this information, Ardhendu would attract prosecution under section 201 of IPC as his action, in such circumstances would tantamount to “causing disappearance of evidence of offense” specifically as the body of class IV employees has stoutly denied working of any such man of their rank in Sarangi residence and further as that man has disappeared.

On another thread of Law, if Pradip was really a man, legally or extra-legally pressed on domestic duty by the Sarangis in their official residence, and he has perpetrated the murderous assault on Sethi, then giving credence to the aforesaid informant, Sarangi and his family individually and collectively attract prosecution under section 119 and section 120 of IPC.

Nobody commits a crime thus grave without any criminal intent.

If Pradip has committed the crime, according to the so-called eyewitness informant, he did it without exchanging any word with the victim and walked away from the compound without any obstruction. That means he had a concealed design to murder Sethi. By not informing the nearest Magistrate or the nearest Police Officer of commencement of the crime, Ardhendu has concealed the culprit, which by extension means, he has facilitated execution of concealed design of Pradip to murder Sethi. Therefore he is prosecutable under section 120 of IPC that says if the offense is committed, the facilitator “shall be punished with imprisonment of the description provided for the offense and with such fine as is provided for”.

The IPC under section 119 has provided specific punishment for “whosoever being a public servant intending to facilitate knowing it to be likely that he will thereby facilitate the commission of an offense which it is his duty bas such public servant to prevent, voluntarily conceals by any act or illegal omission, the existence of a design to commit such offense ………..shall, if the offense be committed, be punished with imprisonment of any description provided for the offense for a term which may extend to one-half of the longest term of such imprisonment, or with such fine as is provided for that offense, or with both”.

Instead of playing hoodwinking tricks, Chief Minister Navin Patnaik should ask the Police to Act according to Acts in force, a few threads of which are discussed above.

And, instead of showing us stars on the day sky, Police should assure us that it understands the spirit of the Code of Criminal Procedure and has the aptitude to act according to the Code even if thereby it is to act against powerful IAS officers.

Hoodlumism of IAS officers has shown its ugly face many a times in Orissa even to the extent of posing open affront to authority of the Assembly. This time the aggrieved persons are neither the MLAs nor self-centric persons who benefit by hobnobbing with those people in power. This time it is a very poor man who having served the State as an employee in the lowest cadre for more than 15 years has not been regularized in service but on the other hand, pressed to do duties in the residence of couple in IAS has been used in menial works and lastly been brutally assaulted to the extent of hospitalization under coma that necessitated a brain-repair through neurosurgery without his knowledge and without knowing what dreaded damage that would throw him into. In a remarkable solidarity show, the Class IV employees of the State at Bhubaneswar have warned the Chief Minister that they will not tolerate any attempt to hush up the offense.

Therefore it is better for the Chief Minister to ensure that the Police under his control acts according to the Code of Criminal Procedure and refrain from killing the spirit of Section 39 thereof by prosecuting Sarangi under the sections discussed supra if not under 307 of IPC.

Filed under: actionscript, news, politics | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

CRIME IN IAS OFFICERS’ RESIDENCE: IS CM’S STEP THE BEGINNING OF HUSHING UP BUSINESS?

Posted on May 22, 2008 by Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

If the Chief Secretary (CS) investigates and issues a clean chit to IAS officer Ardhendu Mohan Sarangi and his wife Madhur also of IAS, in the matter of murderous assault on a low-paid employee in their residence, can the Police dare to find them guilty?

The poor employee Ramesh Sethi engaged in gardening by the Sarangis was brutally assaulted in their secured compound that has rendered him senseless since morning of May 21. With a surgery on brain he has been laying in critical condition in the Neurosurgery Department of S. C. B. Medical College, where Sarangi had remained present in the daytime today.

Sarangi’s presence in the Hospital watching progress of the operation makes it clear that he is well aware of the crime perpetrated. But he has not informed the Police about it. Why? Police is to find out the answer. Many such questions are there that the Sarangis are the persons to answer. But will the Police elicit the answers or the Chief Secretary?

When Sarangis have stayed away from informing the Police on the crime committed in the secured privacy of their residence, a self-proclaimed priest of theirs has preferred a belated FIR that informs Police of assault on Sethi with a spade following which the spade has been recovered from Sarangi’s compound.

So it is a homicidal offence calling for sessions trial.

In the matter of offenses of this nature, Law has given Police the right to investigate. But Law has never given any investigative role to the Chief Secretary.

It is intriguing therefore that the Chief Minister has preferred the CS to investigate into this tricky case of crime.

Is it the beginning of hushing up business?

Filed under: actionscript, news, politics | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

OFFICIAL VANDALISM ON SRI JAYA DEV IN ORISSA CONTINUES

Posted on May 21, 2008 by Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

People of Orissa are so loyal to their revolutionary poet Sri Jaya Dev that they have named the stairs of Sri Mandira, the temple of Lord Jagannatha at Puri as Baisi Pahacha in honor of the poet’s twenty-two love lyrics that later day compilers have captioned as Gita Govinda. But in Orissa the immortal poet continues to be vandalized by the occupiers of power.

Looking into the past we see that Emperor Purusottam Dev was the first from the throne to have tried to play the vandal tricks on Sri Jaya Dev. He had used his sovereign powers to promulgate his own work captioned Abhinav Gita Govinda in Sri Mandira by discarding daily recitation of Sri Jaya Dev’s Astapadi lyrics before Sri Jagannatha.

The brave people of Orissa had refused to tolerate this vandalism and had raised their voice most vehemently against the mighty Emperor. The mass upsurge was of such sharp velocity that the sovereign ruler had to relent, had to withdraw his book and had to restore the poet’s Asthapadi lyrics to the original status.

Nowhere in whole of the world common peoples of a Nation had so strongly stood with a poet of their soil and nowhere in the entire world a ruthless Emperor, in order to escape peoples’ wrath, had to withdraw his own work and to restore the poet’s work in a temple system the management of which was under his imperial control.

But while thus stepping back, the shrewd Emperor had legitimatized massive interpolations in the poet’s original work to pave way for the Brahmins to hijack Sri Jaya Dev into their nefarious fold with an ulterior motive to obliterate the Buddhist aura the Astapadi love lyrics were known for.

I have discussed this phenomenon in depth in my published work Sri Jaya Devanka Baisi Pahacha (the twenty-two stairs to Lord Jagannatha that Sri Jaya Dev had created). The hard edition is published and marketed by Cuttack’s eminent publishing house “The Bharata Bharati” and the e-edition is placed in orissamatters.com as well as in scribd.com. We will later return to this phenomenon in course of this serial presentation.

But at this stage it suffices to say that the people of Orissa had refused to remain silent over the tricks Purusottam Dev and his Brahmin ministers had played.

They renewed their agitation against the Emperor and despite having created many legends to impose Krushna of Dwaraka as Sri Jagannatha in place of Buddha of Orissa and to convince the peoples of the Lord’s approval of his action, Purusottam Dev had not succeeded in silencing their protests.

The people did not rest till his son and successor Emperor Prataparudra Dev issued an irrevocable order that no other work of letters can ever replace Sri Jaya Dev’s love lyrics in the ritual of dance and music before the Lord.

People of Orissa had celebrated this victory of theirs by throwing away the images of Adi Samkaracharya and his disciple Padmapada from the podium of Sri Jagannatha where the Brahmins had consecrated those images as a mark of their caste supremacy and in a brute design to impose legitimacy on conversion of Buddha Jagannatha to Krushna Jagannatha.

It is quite thrilling to try to fathom what a great peoples’ upsurge that must have been that could embolden the common man of Orissa to kick out the images of Adi Samkara and his disciple Padmapada from the Ratna Simhasana of Sri Jagannatha and to break them with utmost contempt into pieces and to throw those pieces to the dumping yards by the pavements of Puri.

This wonderful mass rise against practitioners of caste apartheid crowned with Emperor Prataprudra’s irrevocable orders that nothing but the lyrics of Jaya Dev (who had authored them as the literature of Buddhist Sahajayana in order to curb the culture of caste apartheid) could ever be allowed recitation before the Lord had so effectively exterminated the hegemony of Brahminism in Sri Mandira system that the Brahmins had to remain content with a limited role to play.

Thus under Prataparudra Dev the Buddist aura of Sri Jaya Dev and his Astapadi lyrics were restored. Caste apartheid had waned.

But religious revivalism having taken new wings as India has fallen into the labyrinth of plutocratic chaos, a new phase of attempt to extinguish the entire Buddhist aura that holds the real identity of Sri Jaya Dev has begun with official help.

Notwithstanding the poet’s own description and notwithstanding ancient literary evidences showing Kenduvilwa on the sea near the city of Puri as Sri Jaya Dev’s birthplace, modern agents of Brahminism have been trying to establish a Brahmin village called Kenduli near Bhubaneswar as the poet’s birthplace.

When the State Exchequer as well as Bureaucracy of the State was for the first time used in this campaign, we had, in these pages, deemed it proper to object to that offensive endeavor and to urge upon the Government to desist from cooperating with false projection of the most uniquely socio-philosophic revolutionary poet of Orissa.

Orissa’s history has been wronged by vested interest attempts to eclipse Sri Jaya Dev’s real identity with a creed he never belonged to by a section of regional chauvinists amongst the Bengalis as well as by the caste chauvinists amongst the Oriyas.

So, we had in these pages tried to apprise the State Government of Orissa of the necessity of keeping the State machinery away from attempts to push Sri Jaya Dev into the fold of the culture of caste apartheid.

But instead of paying attention to our culturally competent pleadings, the State is increasingly being used to play patron to the caste supremacist design to hijack Sri Jaya Dev again into the culture of caste apartheid. The role of the State Government last week in celebration of his birthday can be nothing but an affront to Sri Jaya Dev and his creed.

It is being marked that at par with official attempts to legalize Sri Jaya Dev’s placement under a caste fold, caste apartheid has increasingly raised its ugly fangs in Jagannatha temples at different places in Orissa. And also it has started infesting Oriya society as a whole.

How long the State shall continue under confusion and how long Sri Jaya Dev shall continue suffering official vandalism in his own State with savage violation of the creed he had propounded in his love lyrics?

Should we not cogitate if at all we have any love for our culture?

Filed under: Animadversion, art & culture, Buddha Jagannatha, Editorials, education, history, news, orissa, politics | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

CAPITALISTS IN QUAGMIRE: GANDHIJI’S THEORY OF TRUSTEESHIP MAY GIVE A TEMPORARY REPRIEVE

Posted on May 5, 2008 by Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Notwithstanding different and rival geographical nationalities, human society has now become ‘global’.

A single factor is responsible for this. And, that is ‘industry’.

Industry has only one aim. That is ‘profit’.

Profit has two types of ‘utilization’.

When private operators – individual or corporate – own Industry, the profit goes to personal coffers for benefit of the private operator. When ‘Society’ owns Industry, profit goes to the State Exchequer for utilization in social welfare. The former phenomenon has its philosophical base in Political Economy of Capitalism and the later in Political Economy of Socialism.

Socialism as a social science has developed in seeking end of uncompensated exploitation of natural and human resources by private profiteers and with its emergence it has ushered in confidence in human beings for continued freedom from oppression.

Oppressive forces have conspired against the new order and their planted agents have sabotaged socialist countries from within in aggressive attempts at extinguishing the latest political light that shows ways for utilization of industrial profit in cause of social welfare instead of getting stored in the black chambers of individual coffers. And to their preening best, they have unilaterally declared that the world is now unipolar!

But what has happened to this unipolar world?

Amusing it is to note that the principal architect and highest leader of the unipolar world, US of America is in quagmire due to excesses of capitalism!

Anne D’Innocenzio, Business Writer of Associated Press gives glimpses of this when on Apr 29, 2008 he informs:

“Struggling with mounting debt and rising prices, faced with the toughest economic times since the early 1990s, Americans are selling prized possessions online and at flea markets at alarming rates.
“To meet higher gas, food and prescription drug bills, they are selling off grandmother’s dishes and their own belongings. Some of the household purging has been extremely painful — families forced to part with heirlooms”.

The position is so precarious that policy-makers representing the Group of Seven free-market democracies after meeting in Washington have pledged “to purge capitalism of the excess that caused the latest crisis in financial markets” and “to finish much of the groundwork within 100 days and the rest by year-end”, reports Brian Love, European Economics Correspondent of Reuters on April 13, 2008.

But, quoting Geithner he says, it is “hard to do, complicated to figure out how to do it well”.

But capitalism cannot be purged of its excesses.

Notwithstanding lexical meanings, it stands for “competition to grab profit”.

In the perception of the profit grabbers, competition ushers in free-market and free-market upkeeps democracy. So to them, democracy is synonymous with free-market.

In a free-market the operators never compete to share the profit with the peoples or to pump in the profit to the public exchequer. Competition takes place only in order to generate more and more profit and to grab the same for personal use by the operators of industries.

For an instance, Mukesh Ambani’s 27-floor skyscraper tipped to be the costliest home in the world now under construction at Malabar Hill of south Mumbai attracts attention.

It is on records before Judiciary that the plot on which the house is being built belongs primarily to an Orphanage over which the Maharashtra State Wakf Board claims to be the custodian.

The state government’s steps to cancel the deed that has helped Ambani occupy the Wakf land was stayed by the Mumbai High Court in October 2007 and now the Supreme Court has rejected a plea against the HC order with observation that the HC is competent to decide the case.

Without any prejudice to judiciary’s role in the matter, it can safely be said that had industrial profit not been grabbed by Mukesh as personal property such a naked exhibition of individual opulence mocking at the wretched existence of majority Indians could not have mattered on the soil of India.

The judiciary can nullify the land transaction deed but cannot intervene in exhibition of opulence howsoever that may mock at the people of India perishing under poverty.

This unrestrainedly displayable opulence is a strong factor of industrial competition facilitated by free-market economy.

This competition therefore is competition amongst industry owners and traders to amass personal wealth by maximizing exploitation of natural and human recourses of the country where they operate.

Thus, when a small number of individuals amass huge volume of wealth, like the top 20 ‘rich Indians’ having amassed wealth equivalent to earning of 30 crore of (middle class) people of India as reported by PTI quoting Reserve Bank of India’s former Governor, Bimal Jalan on Jan 25, 2008, citizens of the citadel of capitalism, USA, as reported by AP, “are selling prized possessions online and at flea markets at alarming rates” to “meet higher gas, food and prescription drug bills”.

It is not known as to what is perceived by leaders of free economy as “excess” of Capitalism that the imperialists want to purge out within 100 days; but this precarious condition to which the people have been pushed into is certainly an outcome of the excesses of capitalism.

And the situation is so very precarious, because any attempt to save people from unbearable cost of living would be resented to by industry owners as thereby the the quantum of profit they fetch may be affected, the policy makers also express fear that the purging would be “hard to do”, even “complicated to figure out how to do”.

What would happen if they fail to do what they want to do?

India has examples to offer.

She had, on her soil, in the past, around six hundred persons who were Kings and Emperors who had been exploiting the people and the soil to their personal advantage and displaying their opulence in form of massive palaces, even in tombs for their spouses like the Taj. They had made bards sing their glories and made poets write scriptures equating them with Vishnu, the celestial Lord.

Where are they now?

They are no more the Lords. No more the moving Vishnus.

People of India under guidance of the Communists, who, in many kingdoms had raised armed revolutions against the kings and emperors, at the summit of freedom movement, dethroned them and threw them into the dustbin of time.

That would happen, for sure, again in respect of owners of Industry all over the world if individual opulence remains its creed than welfare of human society.

Therefore, it can be said that the decision of Group of Seven Capitalist countries at Washington to purge the excess of capitalism is perhaps the last hope for their survival.

The sooner Indian Industry and advocates of free economy understand this phenomenon, the better for them that would be.

Termination of Nepal kingdom under leadership of the Communists is perhaps the last warning to private cofferists to understand the truth that notwithstanding who owns industries, profits are the creation of community and if community is denied to have necessary benefits out of that, whatsoever office stands on the way, the community must throw that away.

If immediate rescue from the quagmire is the aim, for the capitalist seeking their system purged of excesses of capitalism, Gandhiji’s Theory of Trusteeship, if adopted whole-heartedly, may grant them a temporary reprieve.

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