Arnab’s arrest a blunder

Julio Ribeiro

Who in the Maharashtra Government took the foolish decision to reopen an old case of abetment to suicide in order to arrest Arnab Goswami, head honcho of Republic TV? It could not have been Param Bir Singh, the Mumbai Police Commissioner, because the suicide occurred outside the limits of his jurisdiction! Param Bir is presently involved in a running battle with Arnab Goswami, the likes of which those who have nothing to occupy their minds take pleasure in watching.

My guess is the CM himself, as he has a grouse against Goswami. Param Bir must have been consulted. At least, he was certainly in the loop because his pet officer, sharpshooter Sachin Vaze, was present when the arrest was made, as were the staff of the police station in whose jurisdiction in the city Goswami resides. The case of suicide took place in the adjoining district of Raigad in 2018. An interior decorator to whom Goswami and two others owed Rs 5.4 crore for work done took his life because of financial distress. Strangely, he seems to have killed his own mother before taking his own life.

The man had left a note blaming Goswami and his two colleagues for his decision to die. The police had closed the investigation at that time, and to my mind, rightly so. Non-payment of a debt or of dues for work done cannot be interpreted as abetment to suicide of the wronged party. There was no active encouragement provided to the dead by Goswami or his colleagues that led to the fatal decision, though it is clear that prompt payment of bills is not his priority. In fact, the police should have concluded the investigation with a ‘C’ summary, which meant that no offence was disclosed. Instead, an ‘A’ summary was made which meant an offence was committed, but there was no evidence to support the charge.

It is time for the courts to instruct the police what exactly abetment to suicide means. At present, if anyone takes his own life, like Sushant Singh Rajput did, the police troubles the person found to have been the cause of the suicide. This is preposterous. Goswami, as a self-appointed Investigator, found poor Rhea Chakraborty to be the cause and hounded her. If she was a weak woman who then committed suicide, would Goswami have been the cause? This was not the intention of the legislators. They were guided by the suicides of brides in Gujarat, tortured for dowry.

In his recently published autobiography, A Road Well Travelled, the former CBI chief, RK Raghavan, recounts the attempt of the then CM of Tamil Nadu, MG Ramachandran, to pressure him (Raghavan) to pin a murder charge on film director Balu Mahendra. The latter’s live-in girlfriend had committed suicide because Balu had refused to marry her. Raghavan, then the crime branch chief in his parent state, refused to turn a suicide into a murder. He was then asked to book Balu for abetment to suicide and was summarily removed from his job when he refused to oblige! The dubious practice of booking people for abetment to suicide has now become routine.

The widow of the dead man in the Raighar case appears to have been advised to lodge a complaint with the local Judicial Magistrate, who promptly ordered the police to investigate the matter afresh. I would not be surprised if the new set of policemen in office was privy to this arrangement. They soon concluded that Goswami’s non-payment was the trigger (probably it was) for the man to take his life. But why they rejected the findings of their predecessors, recorded during the reign of the BJP government, is not known. We can conclude that personal vendetta was the motive for this sudden change of tack.

The whims of politicians in power cannot be the criterion for the police fixing guilt. Unfortunately, culpability is being routinely determined by political equations and interests. One never had this feeling earlier. Ducks and drakes with the truth and with the law are now being played by the parties in power. All available agents of government are used to manufacture material to embarrass rivals. By their machinations, they only succeed in politicising the police and reducing politics to its lowest levels. If our judiciary sits up and takes corrective action, it will be a great boon to democracy and society in which we live.

Goswami can hardly be called a journalist. Before I competed in the Civil Services examinations, I worked for two years as a Sub-Editor in the National Standard, now renamed The Indian Express. My immediate superior was Sharada Prasad, who later became press adviser to the then PM Indira Gandhi. The first lesson I learnt from him was that the core responsibility of a true journalist was to keep the government of the day in check lest it abuse the vast power it enjoys. Goswami does not fit into this definition. He is just a paid spokesman for the government.

Many citizens feel that he is getting a taste of his own medicine. Personally, I feel that the Maharashtra Government has made a tactical mistake by arresting him for a crime there never was. By going after him in a spirit of revenge for the pain he inflicted every day on the guilty and the not guilty alike, those who planned this revenge have only given him a chance to play the victim card. By arresting him for not paying legitimate dues, which incidentally is not an uncommon phenomenon, the plotters have given him a chance to complain. Just like he had turned Rhea Chakraborty into an object of pity by his unprincipled hounding of her on his channel.