L’affaire Rathore recalls the searing insight of a sagacious judge
As a cub reporter in the Lucknow of the early 1970s, I knew a police officer, Paras Nath Mishra – then DIG, Economic Offences in the UP government. Mishra enjoyed immense popularity among his colleagues, Lucknow Coffee House denizens and also a wide circle of people from all walks of life—bureaucracy, politics, journalism, mill workers, peasants, trade unions and whatnot. He was what we then called a khaanti or hardcore Marxist but he was friendly with leaders and activists of all political parties and intellectuals of all political persuasions. He was known as an upright officer as well as a competent one.
It was from Mishra that I first heard the famous quote from former Allahabad High Court judge Anand Narain Mullah that I still fondly reiterate to my friends and colleagues whenever an opportunity comes my way. The late Justice Mullah is said to have observed during the hearing of a case: “The most organized criminal force in India is the Indian police.”
Those words were brought to my mind once again by the news reports about the misdeeds of Haryana DGP SPS Rathore. How lamentably apt they sound in the backdrop of Rathore’s blatant and brazen subversion of the entire system of governance from the lowest police station to the highest levels of the state investigating institution, the CBI! Rathore has proven the sagacity of Justice Mullah’s observation. The quotation deserves to be carved on stone and installed in front of every police station as well as the CBI headquarters.
‘There can be no corrupt junior officer without an equally, if not more, corrupt senior officer above him nor a corrupt officer at the top without an equally, if not more, corrupt political boss above him’
Mishra also used to emphasise, with the insight gained from his own job, that “there can be no corrupt junior officer without an equally, if not more, corrupt senior officer above him nor a corrupt officer at the top without an equally, if not more, corrupt political boss above him”. Yet again, these words are borne out by every act of Rathore. Mishra also said that the more corrupt an officer, the greater favourite he was of his corrupt political boss.
Ordinary citizens often wonder why politicians go so far out of their way to defend, assist and even promote dishonourable and dissolute officers like Rathore – as several Haryana Chief Ministers have done. The reason is that it is only such officers who, once caught committing a dishonourable act, will go to any length to carry out the bidding of their political boss. It is a symbiotic relationship. And such relationships are not based on monetary gain alone. Quite often, there are a number of other modes and means of exchange between the two partners in such relationships—land, votes, vehicles, sex. Once the relationship between an officer and his political boss sinks to such a low level, there is no limit to the moral depths it can plumb.
