OVER the past three decades, the umbilical cord that ties Indian democracy to crime has grown so thick and variegated that the allegations against the Delhi property mogul Romesh Sharma that have appeared in the press after his arrest on October 20 have aroused little more than a sick fascination in the newspaper reading public. What after all is Sharma supposed to have done that a host of underworld dons have not been doing for decades in Bombay? How can one get worked up about him when 19 ministers in Kalyan Singh's government in UP have criminal records or 'history sheets' and one, Hari Shankar Tiwari, has no less than 37 murder indictments pending against him. Before the likes of Tiwari and Mukhtar Ansari, also of UP, or Arun Gawli, Babu Reshim, and Rama Naik of Bombay, Sharma is small fry.
Readers of this column who have reacted in this way would do well to think again. The Sharma case marks a watershed in the corruption and criminalisation of the political system. Once it is crossed, crime will consume not just Indian society, but also the Indian State. Let us leave aside, for the moment, the question whether Sharma is guilty or innocent. That will be decided by a court of law. But if even half of the 13 cases that the Delhi police have lodged against him are well-founded it means that Romesh Sharma is not simply living outside the law. For him the law has ceased to exist.
For Sharma, Delhi, and for that matter Bombay, Lucknow, Allahabad, and wherever else his fancy roams, is a primeval jungle in which he simply takes whatever his eyes falls upon, no matter to whom it belongs. He has filed no returns of his income, and answered no summons from any judicial or administrative authority. Papers the police recovered when they raided his Chhattarpur farmhouse showed that this man, who has only a diploma in refrigeration engineering, and started his working life earning Rs 20 a day, has property worth Rs 500 crore! This included around 30 pieces of real estate, ranging from at least one large tract of land, and several farms to more than two dozen apartments and houses, in Delhi, Bombay, Lucknow and Allahabad, 15 foreign cars and a helicopter. According to the police, the papers in his farm show that he was targeting another 300 properties at the time of his arrest.
Blackmail, kidnapping, and extortion on pain of injury, death and dishonour have been his methods of 'capital accumulation'. Women have been lured to his flats, compromised and filmed; men kidnapped and kept in his flats till they agreed to sign away their property for a pittance; those of either sex who tried to resist were mercilessly beaten and threatened with death. But how has he got away with it for 11 long years, after moving to Delhi from Bombay? Why has no one, till now, gone to the police?
The answer is chilling. Not just for Sharma, but for his victims too, the law has ceased to exist. For them Sharma is a Black Widow spider sitting at the centre of a web that joins Dawood Ibrahim, and his henchmen Chhota Shakeel, Irfan Goga and Abu Salem, at one extreme, to a former prime minister, two former chief ministers, and innumerable lesser 'leaders' and prominent businessmen whom he services as a hawala dealer. They have seen him get a false passport for Dawood Ibrahim's mother in a single day and hide Ibrahim's sister in Delhi till she too could get away to Dubai. They have seen how impotent the forces of the law feel when dealing with him: how in the last 17 months the Malaviya Nagar police station has 'failed' to serve no less than four non-bailable warrants on the man; how the owners of the helicopter and one of Sharma's farms have gone from pillar to post seeking to register a case against him; how even the CBI is reluctant to press inquiries against him.
They know how Sharma has bought immunity: by becoming a member of the Congress party, and later the Rashtriya Janata Dal. They have seen him entertaining the high and the mighty. And they well know the ruthlessness of Sharma's underworld friends.
THAT is why Sharma was able to keep kidnap victims in custody for as long as four months, and why when he finally found the nerve to escape all he had to say was that he was going out to buy cigarettes. For his victims there are no safe havens left. The whole of Delhi, perhaps the whole of India has become a prison. Safety lies only in acquiescence.
That is also why Sharma will most probably go free. Five women who had registered cases against him have already backed out and two kidnap and extortion victims are frantically seeking police protection. All fear for their lives when Sharma gets out on bail. Even if they are not killed, none will stay the course, for Indian trials take years and no one can live in acute fear for so long.
The real issue is not whether Sharma is or is not guilty. It is that there are thousands of Sharmas out there and their number is multiplying exponentially as the police and the courts are shown to be impotent. Behind every Bombay shooting of a builder or film personality, there are a hundred settlements involving huge payments or forcible transfers of property. And it is all-pervasive. The ULFA have made it their way of life in Assam; and one has only to renovate one's shop in Bombay today to receive a demand for money, on pain of death, over the telephone. In desperation the police is taking the law into its own hands. Till August last year it had liquidated no less than 120 gangsters in Bombay. Sooner or later this mushrooming cloud of crime will swallow the Indian State. Russia is not the only country in danger of being taken over by the Mafia.
