Bend It Like Modi

Prem Shankar Jha August 09, 2004 00:00 IST Bend It Like Modi -0001-11-30T00:00:00+05:53

Was it only two weeks ago that I warned readers about the way serious flaws in the criminal procedure code that allow the police to keep any Indian citizen in jail without filing charges for long periods have become instruments in the hands of unscrupulous politicians and businessmen to harass their rivals?

Well, it has happened again. And this time it is not the hapless chief executive and legal advisor of a German firm who have been hounded out of the country by an estranged collaborator, but a Union cabinet minister who is being persecuted. I am, of course, referring to Shibu Soren of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM). The motive on this occasion is quintessentially political but it is mean and dirty politics that has brought Indian democracy to a new nadir of shame.

Sometime in the middle of July, the state unit of the BJP, which currently rules Jharkhand, decided that its best chance of getting re-elected lay in timing the state assembly elections to coincide with those to be held in Bihar in six months. The plan to discredit Soren (who is easily the most...