The Toothless Tiger

First, not all known houses and haunts of the former minister were raided simultaneously, giving an opportunity for his alerted men to remove the wealth and documents to safer places or to destroy them. Besides, the firms and persons who are reported to be fronting for him were searched and raided after the raids on some of his properties, leaving ample time for the prime beneficiaries and partners to remove or destroy all evidence.

Second, he is left in splendid safety and freedom abroad, while his mere alleged collaborators were not only searched and questioned but taken into custody, humiliated and jailed. On the one hand Sukh Ram keeps misleading the CBI that he would be returning to India, and the CBI conveniently believes him while incarcerating a government official and a hapless businessman benefactor of the former prime minister's businessman son.

 

To add to this mess Sukh Ram has claimed that the crores found in his houses don't actually belong to him, but to a party the name of which he would disclose when he finds himself fit to return to India. Tomorrow he might even say that the money was planted in his house by the Opposition party. Mr Narasimha Rao defended Sukh Ram in the Parliament for all wrong-doings. Even Sukh Ram says that he did nothing about which the former PM was not aware of. Then what is the CBI after? One thought that Vijaya Rama Rao, former CBI chief, was the servile officer of Mr Narasimha Rao. But now it appears that the CBI is simply a hatchet for politicians in power. Not even the Supreme Court can do anything to rectify this. No politician has ever been successfully prosecuted by the CBI. Do we need this farce?