February 14, 2001

An extended house for Mr Biswas
Laloo and the law

So what makes the fodder scam and Biswas so special to the Centre? Nothing, except the overweening desire of Delhi to have Laloo Yadav finished legally

The irony might have escaped the Supreme Court as it okayed the Central government’s proposal to extend the term of the CBI’s Kolkata-based joint director U.N. Biswas, who would have otherwise superannuated on January 31 last, for another year. It was the second time he got the benefit of extension, the first being when the government raised the retirement age of its employees from 58 to 60. The unusual extension was justified on the ground that it was necessary for the investigation of the fodder scam.

The irony is that it was an extension that Laloo Prasad Yadav as chief minister of Bihar granted to Shyam Bihari Sinha, zonal joint director of Animal Husbandry, that virtually landed him in the fodder scam. The extension was granted on the written recommendation of former Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra at a time when Laloo Yadav did not enjoy majority support in the House. Wrote Mishra: "Sinha has worked very appreciably in the Harijan and Tribal region. Several schemes are going on successfully under his supervision in Chhotanagpur region. In order to keep the progress and standard of the schemes unaffected, Dr Shyam Bihari’s services may be extended by two years. This will be, I understand, in the interest of the ongoing schemes and the public." Laloo Yadav gave in to the persuasive skills of Mishra. He also gave extension to another scamster, R.K. Das.

Whether Laloo Yadav knew at that time that Sinha was the kingpin of the fodder scam, which had been going on merrily for years before he became the political strongman that he is today or not, his motive in granting Mishra’s wish will in any case be central to the CBI’s investigation. In other words, a CBI officer on extension will be probing the circumstances under which another official was granted extension.

Now the pertinent question is whether it is the CBI which is fighting the case against Laloo Yadav or U.N. Biswas? If it is the CBI, surely Biswas’ successor, whoever he was, could have carried on the job. That is how government work is always conducted in this country. As a wag had said, graveyards are full of people who thought they were indispensable. Perchance, Biswas is unable to bring the fodder scam to a logical conclusion in one more year, will the government go back to the court to seek its permission to grant him further extension? For all the spirited efforts the CBI has made in the past to investigate the case, it is now nearly five years since the Patna High Court authorised the CBI to take up the case. Norms of governance do not favour giving investigating officers a role larger than the work of investigation warrants.

The fodder scam is one of the hundreds of cases the CBI handles. In terms of political importance, there are far more important cases like Bofors and the Ayodhya demolition and in terms of the money involved there are the security scandal and the urea scam, to name just two. But in none of these cases has the investigating officer been given the benefit of extension. Otherwise, none of those who investigated some of the CBI cases would have ever retired from its service. So what makes the fodder scam and Biswas so special to the Central government? Nothing, except the overweening desire of the rulers in Delhi to have Laloo Yadav finished legally, having failed in their bid in successive elections to finish him politically.

It is nobody’s contention that Laloo Yadav is as lily white as the clothes he wears. For all one knows, he may have colluded with those who defrauded the state exchequer of hundreds of crores of rupees. If found guilty, he should be given the severest punishment for he — a creature of Jayaprakash Narayanan’s Total Revolution — came on the political scene promising probity in public life and a new deal for the poor and the downtrodden. But the ideal course would be to deal with him as the law of the land demands. And the rule of law stipulates equal treatment for everyone, irrespective of his or her station in life. If that indeed is the touchstone of the rule of law, there’s a clear violation in this particular case.

In the over-enthusiasm to fix Laloo Yadav, propriety often becomes a casualty. It happened to Biswas himself once. In his overzealousness to execute the court’s order to arrest Laloo Yadav and even when the latter had announced his decision to surrender, Biswas rushed to the army headquarters at Danapur to seek its help in arresting him. Since then the Patna police have arrested him four times without any support from the Indian Army. Small wonder that a departmental inquiry indicted the officer for his unseemly conduct. Incidentally, the Samata Party, which campaigned for his extension, had at that time threatened to walk out of the alliance with the BJP if the government initiated any action against Biswas for his extravagant conduct.

And what has been the progress of the case? We continue to hear about the extension Laloo Yadav gave to the Animal Husbandry officials, a scamster becoming the local guardian of his daughters and another arranging air tickets for the family. Apart from this, the CBI has not been able to unearth any fresh evidence against him, although he was sent to jail four times. It needs to be pointed out that sending a charge-sheeted person to judicial custody is to help the investigating agency to question him and gather evidence. But in the case of Laloo Yadav, sending him to jail seems to have become an end in itself for the CBI.

Of course, there have been raids on his residence as on that of his relations but the CBI has not been able to ferret out any hidden wealth unlike in Sukh Ram’s case, where money in sacks were recovered from his puja room. It is doubtful whether the state bothered about the rule book in its desire to have Laloo Yadav put behind bars. For instance, the CBI chief was deprived of his control over the investigating officer, the court began directly monitoring the progress of the case and the CBI circumvented the need to seek the sanction of the governor to prosecute Laloo Yadav and his wife in the disproportionate assets (DA) case by declaring that it was all part of the fodder scam as the money came from the scam. The credit for the DA case, if that indeed is the word, should go to the income tax sleuths who seem to have undervalued his income and overvalued his assets. Again, it is, perhaps, the first time that a wife has been implicated in a DA case.

The total value of Laloo Yadav’s assets under investigation is Rs 42.46 lakh. As one of his biographers, who is otherwise his bitter critic, says, "Few senior politicians in this country would pass a breathalyser on disproportionate assets, and set against the standards of the time, Laloo Yadav’s disproportionate assets were peanuts... Politicians in Delhi can spend more on a single evening’s entertaining." Yet, there is persecution in the name of prosecution.

 

Other columnists:

Other articles by the columnist Anju weds Bullet The bells of Guruvayoor The gin-rum divide The Veerappans thrive