No shielding the culprits

IN INSTITUTING A judicial probe into the abhorrently murky events associated with the arrest of the former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Mr. M. Karunanidhi - events that had shocked the conscience of the civil society because of the brazenly unlawful conduct of the police involved in the vendetta-driven operation - the Jayalalithaa administration has taken a much-too-familiar route, one governments caught in a bind have tended to take. For all the sense of fairness and independence that go with a Commission of Inquiry as a fact-finding and culprit-identifying instrument, this quasi-judicial institution has almost invariably come to be looked upon and employed by governments, both at the Central and State levels, as an extremely useful tool to wriggle out of messy and politically embarrassing situations. Instances are also not wanting of such a commission doing a whitewash or cover-up job, which not unoften had the trappings of a `command performance'. Against this backdrop, serious doubts arise about the real intention of the Jayalalithaa Government in going for the judicial commission option rather than a serious and credible administrative enquiry which could be faster. To say this, however, is not to cast any aspersion on Mr. A. Raman, former judge of the Madras High Court, who has been commissioned to hold the inquiry.

What reinforces one's suspicion is the enlarged scope of the proposed probe, with the focus getting considerably diffused and moving away from all the brutalities and illegalities the police had committed while going for the `kill' on that day. The overwhelming evidence of the dark deeds of the uniformed personnel as was available from the video footage screened countrywide and the stinging indictment the police had drawn from the court - for their flagrant violation of human rights and legal norms/procedures - clearly pointed to the area and the direction of the correctives that are called for. In what appears to be a calculated `bail out' move, the Government has asked specifically to inquire whether any of the police personnel were ``physically assaulted and obstructed from discharging their legitimate duties'' during the arrest of Mr. Karunanidhi; the unstated but obvious `targets' are of course the Union Ministers, Mr. Murasoli Maran and Mr. T. R. Baalu, whose actions seem trivial when placed alongside the brutality displayed by the police.

At one level, the `Maran-Baalu'-specific term of reference would appear to be her `response' to the note of `warning' the ruling coalition at the Centre had issued in the wake of the police excesses, after toying with harsher options of intervention, including Article 356, and ultimately rejecting them as either politically inexpedient or impracticable. Apart from insisting on measures by the Tamil Nadu Government to demonstrate that it is not ``deliberately creating a situation of conflict with the Centre'' and demanding a commitment from it that the guidelines stipulated by the Supreme Court would be adhered to strictly while effecting arrests, the missive wanted action to be taken against those officials who had misbehaved with the Union Ministers. At another level, it seems to have much to do with the assurance the Government gave the police last week while dropping the criminal charges against Mr. Maran and Mr. Baalu (that they assaulted and obstructed the police from discharging their duty), namely ``due care will be taken to protect their interests''. While no one can grudge the police an opportunity to put forth their case and no action can be taken without an enquiry, any attempt to use it for deflecting the course of the inquiry itself or extending the `protection' of the police's interests to mean `shielding' the culprits among them would be contrary to the rule of law.

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