Above: Parappana Agrahara Central prison, Bengaluru, where Sasikala is jailed

VK Sasikala received special treatment in Bengaluru jail says the one-man commission constituted to probe alleged violation of prison rules

By Stephen David in Bengaluru

India’s jails are overcrowded – anywhere between 150 per cent and 600 per cent of their sanctioned capacity. Adding to the woes of the country’s almost half a million prison inmates packed like sardines in a tin, 30 per cent of the nearly 78, 000 sanctioned strength is yet to be filled. And this anomaly, according to some retired police officials, provides ample room to exploit the system by inmates who have the resources to make themselves comfortable (read: receive VIP treatment) inside India’s nearly 1,400 jails.

In July 2017, within days of taking over as Karnataka Deputy Inspector General of Police, Prisons, Karnataka’s first Kannadiga woman IPS officer Divakar Roopa reported her observations from her prison visits to the state top brass in her department and the home minister. Just a few months earlier, in Feb 2017, the 40-acre Parapanna Agrahara Bengaluru Central Jail had welcomed three “VIP” inmates from the Tamil Nadu capital, Chennai, 350 km away.

On Feb 14, 2017, delivering a 560-page judgment, a Supreme Court division bench of Justices Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Amitava Roy sent Vivekanandan Krishnaveni Sasikala [or VK Sasikala] and two of her relatives to Karnataka’s biggest jail in Bengaluru. The two judges set aside an earlier order of the Karnataka High Court that had stayed the conviction of Sasikala and three others by a trial court in a disproportionate assets case.

Sasikala, 60, was the general secretary of AIADMK and a close aide of J. Jayalalithaa, the former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, who headed AIADMK from 1989 until her death in December 2016. Sasikala, with no political background, seemed to have learnt the art of making friends and influencing people early in life: her marriage to a government public relations official M Natarajan was presided over by DMK supremo M Karunanidhi, a known political rival of Jayalalithaa. Sasikala got to know an IAS officer, VS Chandralekha, who was very close to Jayalalithaa, and very soon threaded her way into becoming Jayalalithaa’s constant companion. Perhaps, the only reason why Sasikala didn’t succeed in her bid to become Tamil Nadu chief minister after Jayalalithaa’s demise is because the apex court nixed her chances by convicting her in the DA case.

The apex court had found Sasikala and her co-accused – Ilavarasi (her sister-in-law) and VN Sudhakaran (her nephew) — guilty of conspiring, laundering and amassing illicit wealth worth about Rs 66.44 crore in the 1990s in a criminal conspiracy, hatched along with Jayalalithaa. The three were sentenced to a four-year jail term.

Sasikala, who was denied special privileges by the court, slept on the floor the first night in her cell in the Bengaluru jail. Karnataka chief minister at that time, Siddaramaiah, had asked his officials to provide her a mat and a pillow if it was under the rules. He later clarified that he hadn’t sought special treatment for her or her aides.

A few months later, after IPS officer D Roopa, took over as DIG Prisons in Karnataka, she flagged the issue of Sasikala and her aides getting special treatment in the prison in her internal report in July 2017 to the home department and her main boss, Director General of Police [DGP] Prisons HNS Rao. Roopa’s allegations, based on her visit and interactions at the 2,000-capacity prison that was overrun with 4,000+ inmates, even though it was the largest in the state, got Rao’s goat because she had alleged that there was a talk of Rs 2 crore exchanging hands for Sasikala and her aides to ostensibly enjoy VIP treatment there.

An admirer of retired IPS officer Kiran Bedi, now Puducherry Governor, Roopa’s internal report found its way into the media forcing the Siddaramaiah government to transfer her and Rao out of the department and ordering a probe by a retired IAS officer, Vinay Kumar into the allegations. Rao, stung by the insinuations, slapped a Rs 20 crore defamation suit against Roopa. She, in her reply, maintained that she had named Rao as the recipient of the bribe. The government had also asked the Anti Corruption Bureau [ACB] to investigate and give its findings.  Rao, who has since retired, must pin his hopes on the ACB completing its investigations.

Although the one-man commission of Vinay Kumar had submitted its 295-page report in Nov 2017 itself, it is only now that excerpts of the report have trickled into the media since they were made available to an RTI activist by the home department. Kumar’s report alleges that prison officials had falsified several records for Sasikala and her sister-in-law Ilavarasi. Like an entire corridor with five rooms being left empty for Sasikala’s use, under the guise of providing security to her. Or how Ilavarasi had a visitor who stayed more than the permitted 45 minutes, violating Rule 601 of the Karnataka Prison Manual 1978. Or the presence of cooking vessels in Sasikala’s cell, though food was to be consumed from the jail kitchen. Vinay Kumar’s report is filled with “evidences” and “documentation” provided to him by Roopa herself.

Reacting to the media reports, Sasikala’s advocate A. Ashokan has been quoted refuting the allegations in the Vinay Kumar report shared by the RTI activist: “Sasikala has not violated any rules of the Karnataka prison’s manual any time. She is wearing personal clothes as per the prison rules. The allegations are all wrong.”  The advocate added that he would react after going through the official report.

With Rao retired, Roopa transferred out of the prisons department and the ACB yet to nail the person/persons linked to the Rs 2 crore bribery talk as alleged by the IPS officer, there is a need to urgently address the larger issue of prison overcrowding and quickly filling the jail staff vacancies on a war footing.

India has 33 prisoners for every one lakh population. While pre-trial detainees comprise about 67 per cent, female prisoners are around five per cent of India’s approximately half a million-prison population. Among the 1,400 jails in the country, there are only 18 women’s jails and 134 central jails.

In May 2018, hearing a matter regarding inhuman conditions of jails in India, a bench of Supreme Court Justices Madan B Lokur (now retired) and Deepak Gupta lambasted the state Governments and the Union Territories to fast track reforms to ensure prisoners are not kept in jail like animals.

“What is the point in talking about prison reforms when we cannot keep them in jail? We should release them, if you cannot keep them properly… It is unfortunate that the prisons are overcrowded. Prisoners also have human rights and they cannot be kept in jails like animals,” the two judges had said.

With a majority of the prison population comprising of under trials, the bench had said the high number showed the failure of the Under-Trial Review Committees [UTRC] which need to take their responsibilities seriously; inmates have got bail but cannot be released as they cannot furnish sureties. In some cases, people are imprisoned for petty offences under which they should have got bail long ago.

The UTRCs, set up in every district, deliberates and recommends the release of under trial prisoners and convicts who have undergone their sentences or are entitled to be released from jail on bail or remission granted to them.

The apex court had, through orders of May 6, 2016, and Oct 2, 2016, directed preparation of a plan of action by States and UTs to deal with the issue of overcrowding in prisons. The proposal was to be submitted by Mar 31, 2017. Not one State complied.  Even warnings of contempt notices to the top honchos in charge of prisons across the country did not elicit the desired actions in time.

The Vinay Kumar report, in addition to showcasing the malady afflicting the Karnataka capital’s main jail, could also help address the Supreme Court’s major concern regarding prisons in India irrespective of who the inmates are: Sasikala or thousands of less known folks locked up with no way out.

The Supreme Court bench of Justices PC Ghose and Amitava Roy on February 22 directed that the court’s order on the Sutlej-Yamuna water link project has to go on. It said that the link-canal for sharing of water between Punjab and Haryana must be built.

Counsel Diwan, appearing for Haryana said that in the execution proceedings an order was passed which needed to be taken into consideration and should be implemented. “We request your lordship to pass an appropriate direction,” he said. He pleaded: “Law and order has to be maintained within Haryana and Punjab.”

Counsel Jethmalani, appearing for Punjab, said: “After hearing Mr Diwan, I believe that government of Haryana has not acted on his advice. There are around a lakh people in Punjab, digging (for the canal).”

The bench observed that the status quo should be maintained and that the “decree of this court needs to be executed and Mr Jethmalani, we ask you to take a responsibility of it.”

Justice Roy said: “We have two alternatives. Either you resolve the issue with the assistance of central government or, if this doesn’t work out, then we have to invoke the legal recourse that culminates into the execution of decree. Therefore, we are going to hear you on the counter that you, that is state of Punjab, has submitted. (The) Canal needs to be constructed.”

Counsel Jethmalani’s plea that the matter be heard after the elections was turned down by Justice Ghose, who said: “This institution has nothing to do with elections.”

The order of the apex court was that the states should maintain law and order. “The decree of this court needs to be executed and till the execution is done status quo needs to be maintained. The central government in any case needs to have an observer status and should keep the surveillance on what’s happening.”

Hearings to continue on March 2

—India Legal News Bureau

Justice Amitava Roy, who was part of the two-judge SC bench that convicted Sasikala and others on February 14, was rather harsh in his Supplementary Verdict. Read on:  

“A few disquieting thoughts that have lingered and languished in distressed silence in mentation demand expression at the parting with a pulpit touch. Hence, this supplement.

The attendant facts and circumstances encountered as above, demonstrate a deep rooted conspiratorial design to amass vast assets without any compunction and hold the same through shell entities to cover up the sinister trail of such illicit acquisitions and deceive and delude the process of law. Novelty in the outrages and the magnitude of the nefarious gains as demonstrated by the revelations in the case are, to say the least, startling.

A growing impression in contemporary existence seems to acknowledge, the all pervading pestilent presence of corruption almost in every walk of life, as if to rest reconciled to the octopoid stranglehold of this malaise with helpless awe. The common day experiences indeed do introduce one with unfailing regularity, the variegated cancerous concoctions of corruption with fearless impunity gnawing into the frame and fabric of the nation’s essential. Emboldened by the lucrative yields of such malignant materialism, the perpetrators of this malady have tightened their noose on the societal psyche. Individual and collective pursuits with curative interventions at all levels are thus indispensable to deliver the civil order from the asphyxiating snare of this escalating venality.

In the above alarming backdrop of coeval actuality, judicial adjudication of a charge based on an anti-corruption law motivated by the impelling necessities of time, has to be informed with the desired responsibility and the legislative vision therefor. Any interpretation of the provisions of such law has to be essentially purposive, in furtherance of its mission and not in retrogression thereof. Innovative nuances of evidential inadequacies, processual infirmities and interpretational subtleties, artfully advanced in defence, otherwise intangible and inconsequential, ought to be conscientiously cast aside with moral maturity and singular sensitivity to uphold the statutory sanctity, lest the coveted cause of justice is a causality.

Corruption is a vice of insatiable avarice for self-aggrandizement by the unscrupulous, taking unfair advantage of their power and authority and those in public office also, in breach of the institutional norms, mostly backed by minatory loyalists. Both the corrupt and the corrupter are indictable and answerable to the society and the country as a whole. This is more particularly in re the peoples’ representatives in public life committed by the oath of the office to dedicate oneself to the unqualified welfare of the laity, by faithfully and conscientiously discharging their duties attached thereto in accordance with the Constitution, free from fear or favour or affection or ill-will. A self-serving conduct in defiance of such solemn undertaking in infringement of the community’s confidence reposed in them is therefore a betrayal of the promise of allegiance to the Constitution and a condemnable sacrilege. Not only such a character is an anathema to the preambulor promise of justice, liberty, equality, fraternal dignity, unity and integrity of the country, which expectantly ought to animate the life and spirit of every citizen of this country, but also is an unpardonable onslaught on the constitutional religion that forms the bedrock of our democratic polity.

This pernicious menace stemming from moral debasement of the culpables, apart from destroying the sinews of the nation’s structural and moral set-up, forges an unfair advantage of the dishonest over the principled, widening as well the divide between the haves and have nots. Not only this has a demoralising bearing on those who are ethical, honest, upright and enterprising, it is visibly antithetical to the quintessential spirit of the fundamental duty of every citizen to strive towards excellence in all spheres of individual and collective activity to raise the nation to higher levels of endeavour and achievement. This virulent affliction triggers an imbalance in the society’s existential stratas and stalls constructive progress in the overall well-being of the nation, besides disrupting its dynamics of fiscal governance. It encourages defiance of the rule of law and the propensities for easy materialistic harvests, whereby the society’s soul stands defiled, devalued and denigrated.

Such is the militant dominance of this sprawling evil, that majority of the sensible, rational and discreet constituents of the society imbued with moral values and groomed with disciplinal ethos find themselves in minority, besides estranged and resigned by practical compulsions and are left dejected and disillusioned. A collective, committed and courageous turnaround is thus the present day imperative to free the civil order from the suffocative throttle of this deadly affliction.

Every citizen has to be a partner in this sacrosanct mission, if we aspire for a stable, just and ideal social order as envisioned by our forefathers and fondly cherished by the  numerous self-effacing crusaders of a free and independent Bharat, pledging their countless sacrifices and selfless commitments for such cause.”

—Compiled by India Legal Bureau

Private individuals culpable if proved abettors in corruption cases      

~By Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr

The main case of disproportionate assets is directed against the late J Jayalalithaa, and it relates to her first tenure as chief minister of Tamil Nadu between 1991 and 1996. VK Sasikala, her sister and her sister’s son whom Sasikala considered her “foster’ son”, were abettors in accumulating disproportionate assets of Jayalalithaa.

Judges Amitava Roy and Pinaki Ghose have said: “The Trial Court held that even private individuals could be prosecuted for the offence under Section 109 of I.P.C. and we find that the Trial Court was right in coming to the conclusion relying on the decision wherein it was observed that acquisition and possession by a public servant was capable of being abetted, and observed that Under Section 3 of the 1988 Act, the Special Judge had the power to try offences punishing even abetment or conspiracy of the offences mentioned in the PC Act and in our opinion, the Trial Court correctly held in this matter that private individuals can be prosecuted by the Court on the ground that they have abetted the act of criminal misconduct falling under Section 13(1)(e) of the 1988 Act committed by the public servant.”

The Supreme Court concurred with the Trial Court’s view that there was “active abetment and conspiracy” on the part of Sasikala, her sister and ‘foster’ son, in the commission of “offences under Section 13 (1) (e)” of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The Trial Court had referred to the General Power of Attorney that Jayalalithaa had executed in favour of Sasikala in “respect of Jaya Publications”, one of the firms floated by Jayalalithaa.

The view put forward by the Trial Court was: “circumstance of executing the power of attorney in favour of A2 indicates that with a view to keep herself secured from legal complications, A1 executed the said power of attorney knowing fully well that under the said powers, A2 would be dealing with her funds credited to her account in Jaya Publications.”

The more stinging observation of the Trial Court about the conspiracy of all the accused, which includes Jayalalithaa and Sasikala, was that “all the accused congregated in the house of A1  (Jayalalithaa) neither for social living nor A1 allowed them free accommodation out of humanitarian concern, rather the facts and circumstances proved in evidence undoubtedly point out that A2 (Sasikala) to A4 (Sasikala’s ‘foster’ son) were accommodated in the house of A1 pursuant to the criminal conspiracy hatched by them to hold the assets of A1.”

Here You Can Read The Full Judgement

The order on national anthem is “an interim measure”. The case is listed for hearing on 14^th February 2017

Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr

The facts of the case in which Supreme Court justices Dipak Mishra and Amitava Roy have issued an order with regard to the playing of national anthem on November 30, 2016 need a closer look to understand the ambit of the court’s directive. The order has been published in the name of Court Masters Madhu Bala and HS Parashar.

The order says, “Mr Rohatgi has submitted that the Union of India shall circulate this order to the Chief Secretaries of all the States and Union Territories. That apart, Mr Rohatgi submits that the order shall be shown in the electronic Media and published in the print media so that everyone knows that such an order has been passed and follow the same in letter and spirit.”

It also says, “This order shall be given effect to within a period of 10 days.”

It has to be noted that the arguments in the case are not yet over. The court has not delivered its judgment. The matter has been posted to 14^th February 2007 “for further hearing.”

So, what is the case? The case is between petitioner Shyam Narayan Chouksey and the Union of India. Chouksey is the petitioner and the center is the respondent.

The petition was filed on October 28, 2016 under Article 32 of the Constitution of India with reference to Insults to National Honour Act, 1971.

The order sums up the argument of the petitioner: “It has been averred in the petition that sometimes the National Anthem is sung in various circumstances which are not permissible and can never be countenanced in law. The emphasis is on showing requisite and necessary respect when the National Anthem is sung or played. The assertion is that it is the duty of every person to show respect when the National Anthem is played or recited or sung.”

It is based on this argument, and while “awaiting the reply from the Union of India” the court has “as an interim measure” issued seven specific directions which are to be “scrupulously followed.”

The following are the seven directives:

“(a) There shall be no commercial exploitation to give financial advantage or any kind of benefit….

(b) There shall not be dramatization of the National Anthem and it should not be included as a part of any variety show…

(c) National Anthem or a part of it shall not be printed on any object and also never be displayed in such a manner at such places which may be disrespectful to its status and tantamount to disrespect….

(d) All the cinema halls in India shall play the National Anthem before the feature film starts and all present in the hall are obliged to stand up to show respect to the National Anthem…

(e) Prior to the National Anthem is played or sung in the cinema hall on the screen, the entry and exit doors shall remain closed so that no one can create any kind of disturbance which will amount to disrespect to the National Anthem…

(f) When the National Anthem shall be played in the Cinema Halls, it shall be with the National Flag on the screen.

(g) The abridge (sic) version of the National Anthem made by anyone for whatever reason shall not be played or displayed.”

From what has been summarized as the “averment” of the petitioner, it is not clear whether there was specific reference to the playing of the National Anthem in cinema halls. So, why did the judges choose to devote three of the seven directives to what should be done in the cinema halls?

Secondly, the petitioner did not seem to have pleaded for interim relief of any kind. Then, why did the court feel impelled to take an “interim measure”?

The more general and a very important question that arises from the court’s order is the rationale of “constitutional patriotism” which it seems to be expounding. The order says, “ Be it stated, a time has come, the citizens of the country must realize that they live in a nation and are duty bound to show respect to National Anthem which is a symbol of Constitutional Patriotism and inherent national quality.”

In the following sentence of the order, a very narrow position has been adopted which seems to exclude any other position: “It does not allow any different notion or the perception of individual rights, that have individually thought of have no space. The idea is constitutionally imperimissible.”

The reasoning does not appear to be rigorous in terms of constitutional jurisprudence, and it needs to be contested and argued before the court when the case comes up for hearing next February.

Lead picture: National flag. Photo: UNI; Supreme Court, Photo: Rajeev Tyagi