Khattar is being blamed disproportionately; criminalised cults are the real culprits

While he cools his heels in the Rohtak jail, where he is poised to spend long years, the so-called Baba, Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, will surely get sufficient time both to regret his action that led to his conviction and also ponder the consequences of the mindless violence let loose by his deranged devotees. With over 30 dead, 250 injured, trains and long-distance bus services disrupted and the beautiful city of Panchkula still smouldering, much of north India has paid a heavy price for the shenanigans of a self-styled godman. Although the courts have ordered Dera Sacha Sauda's vast properties to be sealed and presumably auctioned to pay for the damage inflicted by Ram Rahim's followers, no punishment can be severe enough for the mastermind of the mayhem. It is to be hoped that the learned judges, who will decide the quantum of the sentence on Monday, will opt for the maximum allowed by the statutes. With murder cases against him coming up for judgement soon, it can only be hoped that all the heinous crimes perpetrated by the ‘Baba’ are punished adequately and he spends most of his remaining life in the confines of a prison.

Regrettably, the issue has been so politicised that rather than condemning the criminal rapist, sections of the media and the left-liberal Opposition has trained its guns solely on Haryana Chief Minister Manohar lal Khattar. Arguably, his administration faltered by allowing over one lakh people to congregate in the vicinity of the High Court premises in Panchkula. But anyone familiar with crowd-control techniques in India should be aware how difficult it is to prevent people from assembling in an open space. It is easy to say that Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) had been imposed and not more than four persons should have been allowed to congregate at any one spot in the city. But we are all familiar with the disdain with which prohibitory orders under Section 144 are treated by rampaging mobs.

In this case, it would have been impossible for the security forces to evict the Dera's frenzied supporters without resorting to brute force. In that event, what happened on Friday may well have happened a day or two earlier, jeopardising the trial itself. It is also worth questioning if the judiciary acted sagaciously by threatening the police brass with dismissal, thereby adversely impacting their morale on the eve of the court proceedings. It is nowadays fashionable to cry ‘Off with his Head!’ each time a tragedy or accident happens. When stability and strong administration is needed to bring matters back to normal, repeated sniping is truly uncalled for. Worse, such demands are politically motivated, aimed at destabilising the State Government because it happens to be run by a rival political party. Manohar lal Khattar has come under attack additionally because of his relative inexperience in administration, although his honesty and sincerity are above reproach. This is, therefore, the time for him to assert and prove his critics wrong by working on a war-footing to re-establish normalcy and also to punish the Dera plotters. They may be waiting for another opportunity to unleash a bloodbath if the courts sentence their ‘Baba’ to long years behind bars. The time has also come to deal with the so-called cults with a heavy hand and disband them at the earliest. Judging by the criminal records of most, this should not be an impossible task.