A political vendetta!

Posted by: N D Sharma on: February 15, 2012

• In: Politics
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The criminal investigation department (CID) of the police, at least in Madhya Pradesh, has been used for decades as the dumping ground for the politically inconvenient high profile criminal cases. When a judicial commission, for instance, found the involvement of then chief minister Arjun Singh in the mysterious murder of a government driver, his name was added to the list of the accused and the case was handed over to the CID in the late eighties. No one has since heard of what happened to that case.

It came, therefore, as a BIG surprise when the CID officers swooped on the house of Congress MLA Kalpana Parulekar at Mahidpur in Ujjain district one afternoon early this month, arrested her, brought her to Bhopal and produced her at the residence of a judicial magistrate in the night. The magistrate remanded her to judicial custody.

Congress workers led by PCC chief Kantilal Bhuria and Leader of Opposition Ajay Singh held protests across the State, describing Parulekar’s arrest as political vendetta.

Parulekar is an indefatigable fighter in the cause of farmers. She has been a thorn in the flesh for the BJP government as she had earlier been for the Congress government of Digvijay Singh.

Her crime this time, however, was that she had distributed in the House and then at the press room during the last Assembly session towards the end of November a photograph showing Madhya Pradesh Lokayukta Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar in the RSS uniform. On Naolekar’s complaint that the photograph was morphed, the police had registered an FIR and entrusted the case to the CID “for investigation”.

Not only has the CID functioned out of character in this case, the judiciary, too, did something extraordinary in view of the “gravity” the offence. Kalpana Parulekar’s application for bail was rejected by the chief judicial magistrate (CJM). The appeal against the order of the CJM was also turned down by the Sessions Court in the interest of justice.

Tags: Ajay Singh, Arjun Singh, CID, Digvijay Singh, Kalpana Parulekar, Kantilal Bhuria, Prakash Prabhakar Naolekar