Editorial: Law takes its course

CHENNAI: Whenever a scion of a powerful family gets caught in a scandal, the story invariably follows the same trajectory. The first lurid details come out in a trickle and the police pretend not to have noticed. As the word spreads, regulatory bodies claim to have fallen asleep on the watch. This gives time to the man it's always a male of the species to catch a flight out of India. The police then enact the hurly burly of arriving late, and then, with the quarry now safely out of reach, the authorities commence the show of due process with all its tardy grammar. All this gives time to the kin to hire expert lawyers, grease palms, buy out witnesses and rearrange the facts for an acquittal or a rap on the knuckles. This is what they mean when they say the law shall take its course. Be it a rape case or a hit-and-run, the system always gives the accused a chance.

The Prajwal Revanna case has all the signs of following this trajectory. His credentials are impressive: Grandson of a former PM; nephew of a former CM; son of a powerful legislator; and himself the incumbent MP and current candidate for Hassan. Revanna's self-made sleaze videos, some 2,900 of them including many of women forced into non-consensual sexual acts, have been around since 2019. He even obtained a court injunction against them being published in the media. A local BJP leader wrote to the Karnataka state BJP president alerting him to the videos and advising against an alliance with Revanna's Janata Dal (S).

Yet not only did the BJP see nothing wrong in going ahead with the alliance, the PM himself canvassed for the candidate. Although women victimised by the MP came out into the open with their allegations prior to election day, Revanna exercised his franchise on April 26. Hours later, he caught a 2 am flight to Frankfurt, ahead of the Karnataka government waking up and setting up a special investigation team. We are now in the exponential stage of the scandal when incriminating details will gush out every day, but with the accused well out of reach, the investigators will pretend to have no means at all, no international instruments, to secure his capture. Haven't we seen this trajectory play out in the cases of Vijay Mallya, Lalit Modi, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksey?

Contrast this with how swiftly the authorities have moved in the case involving a doctored video purporting to show Union Home Minister Amit Shah saying at an election rally that the BJP would remove reservations for the SC/ST if reelected. Within 24 hours of the video coming to their notice, the Delhi police have made three arrests, one in Assam and two in Ahmedabad; despatched teams to Jharkhand, Rajasthan, UP, MP, Haryana and Nagaland to trace the origins of the video; slapped notices on opposition politicians in a several states for sharing the video from their official handles; and summoned the CM of Telangana Revanth Reddy to appear for an interrogation.

In India, the law shows despatch only when its masters interests are at stake. Thus, is it a fair quibble to say that it seems to matter more to the ruling party how it is perceived by voters on reservations than on justice for women? How touching then that it should be so worried about the mangalsutras of our mothers and sisters.