The government’s deafening silence on la affaire Ranjit Sinha comes as a cruel joke, especially in the wake of the sanctimonious advice that the prime minister and finance minister had showered on the Bureau and that too at the same platform where the CBI honcho had equated rape with betting. Sinha’s talent for metaphorical leaps notwithstanding, one wonders why the centre is mum on this issue, given that it hasn’t even been one year since the 16 December gang rape incident had rocked the nation to the core. How can a public servant, holding such a high position in an institution that is responsible for finding the truth, be so callous and cavalier in his opinion of the very criminalities that his organisation has been chosen to weed out? And what does it say of the government itself, which had not only picked such a man to lead the top probing body in the country, but is actually shielding him from the collective wrath of the people, whom he has shamed by his reprehensible and ill-thinking comment? Are we supposed to think that we, the people, as per the prime minister Manmohan Singh’s suggestion to the CBI to distinguish between ‘error of judgment’ and ‘criminal intention’, not express our deep anguish and indignation at Sinha’s utterly irresponsible comment and allow him to carry on in his office? Certainly not. And, because the elected government at the centre had been chosen by us, the people, it is directly responsible to ensure that such persons, who cannot pick their words carefully and actually voice the entrenched prejudices in most unseemly manner in public, be released from duty with immediate effect.
It is interesting to note how the CBI chief has put himself in a spot while batting for sports betting, a veritable reservoir of black money, crime, glitz and violence. Obviously, the context is the recent cases of spot-fixing in the Indian Premier League, where even the top bosses of winning teams are faced with charges against them. While it is not an unfair claim, Sinha was way off the mark when he casually remarked that lack of enforcement provisions should be a reason to legalise betting, since ‘it is like saying if you can’t prevent rape, you enjoy it.’ The analogy, besides being improper and unnecessary, nevertheless gave a glimpse of what really goes on in the minds of the public figures in high offices of the government. Incidentally, Sinha sits at the top of such an institution that we trust with digging up the truth, but which has been lambasted by the Supreme Court of India for taking orders from the political masters, for being inept and inefficient in its probes, for opening and closing cases after taking directions from the ruling regime as well as for being a tool in the hands of the government. Hence, despite strong disavowals from both the PM and the FM, that the CBI is a caged parrot in the hands of the government can’t be denied, particularly after the latest snub wherein the centre categorically refused to grant autonomy to the Bureau. However, it seems that the centre, which was up in arms against the Bureau and wanted to check the agency’s evaluative endeavours on ‘policy matters’, is least bothered as far as Sinha’s rape remark is concerned.
It is interesting to note how the CBI chief has put himself in a spot while batting for sports betting, a veritable reservoir of black money, crime, glitz and violence. Obviously, the context is the recent cases of spot-fixing in the Indian Premier League, where even the top bosses of winning teams are faced with charges against them. While it is not an unfair claim, Sinha was way off the mark when he casually remarked that lack of enforcement provisions should be a reason to legalise betting, since ‘it is like saying if you can’t prevent rape, you enjoy it.’ The analogy, besides being improper and unnecessary, nevertheless gave a glimpse of what really goes on in the minds of the public figures in high offices of the government. Incidentally, Sinha sits at the top of such an institution that we trust with digging up the truth, but which has been lambasted by the Supreme Court of India for taking orders from the political masters, for being inept and inefficient in its probes, for opening and closing cases after taking directions from the ruling regime as well as for being a tool in the hands of the government. Hence, despite strong disavowals from both the PM and the FM, that the CBI is a caged parrot in the hands of the government can’t be denied, particularly after the latest snub wherein the centre categorically refused to grant autonomy to the Bureau. However, it seems that the centre, which was up in arms against the Bureau and wanted to check the agency’s evaluative endeavours on ‘policy matters’, is least bothered as far as Sinha’s rape remark is concerned.