SUBHANKAR NAYAK: the boy wonder of Seashore scam
Subhankar Nayak, the boy wonder, is slowly emerging as the beating heart of the Seashore chit fund scam. The little elf knows the entire scam fraternity like the back of his palm. If bookies are right, this cat’s paw for Seashore holds the master key to unlock the treasure trove of information about all the shady shenanigans. His entrepreneurial oomph and intermediary skills smoothened many deals between the criminal enterprise Seashore and its legions of political and bureaucratic bedfellows. He has the ringside view of all the give-and-take details. If this dealmaker extraordinaire is put through the wringer, he can spill all the beans and even deliver the smoking guns the CBI is so desperately looking for. The prize catch can singlehandedly shine a bright spotlight on the shadowy netherworld of criminal intrigues and corrupt offstage deals. He can pinpoint both the illegal and immoral nexus with laser accuracy. Right now, he is burning the building with everyone inside it and there are no exits.
SOUMYA RANJAN PATNAIK: RETURN OF THE PRODIGAl
Participating in a TV debate, media grandee Soumya Ranjan Patnaik said he was expiating for his sins in accepting advertisements from the tainted chit fund companies by joining an association as a tribune to fight for return of the cheated depositors’ money. Cynics will certainly pooh-pooh it as Patnaik’s publicity-seeking stunt and cite his unequal track record of re-launching his flagging political career with new platforms all the time. They would even argue that milking public mood of betrayal is the typical stock-in-trade of all failed politicians. But whatever may be his motive, his expression of regret for accepting advertisement money from the sticky-fingered crooks without checking their background is certainly a silver lining in a horizon fast darkening for us. Such glinting clarity of thought stands in stark contrast with the wishy-washy equivocations we see daily in our public life. As far as I can remember, no other public figure has made such a confession of his mistake so openly and at such full volume.
PRADEEP MAHARATHY’S NATURAl GENIUS FOR CONTROVERSIES
To give Pradeep Maharathy his due, it must be said that he has been a potty-mouthed brawler for far longer than the BJP MlA Radharani Panda has been seen in public life. His hulking figure and buzz-saw voice can never erase from public memory his don-like image he was so famous for in the early years of his political life. His cavalier disregard for decency and civility is widely known. In a foot-in-mouth moment, his aggressive and macho comments against the lady MlA once again brought him to controversy last week. First, he indignantly and almost hysterically denied having used any profane language against his ‘sister’. He would rather stick pins in his eyeballs than beg any apology. He said he was concernedly enquiring about her daughter’s marriage. When such touchy-feely explanation didn’t fool anyone, BJD’s spin doctors tried to coach him in the fine art of saying sorry as if he really meant it. When that didn’t happen and Radharani Panda, using her Brahmastra, cried in public, all of Maharathy’s escape routes were instantly closed. After some make-believe huffing and hawing, he finally tendered an apology which he was so imperiously rejecting right from the very beginning. But given Maharathy’s nature, we can safely conclude that the only lesson he ever learns from any unhappy episode is that he never learns. He will continue to remain an inept bumbler. He simply can’t help rustic blather coming out of his blubbery lips all too often. He has a natural genius to get tangled up in controversies. It is as futile to expect Maharathy to behave decently as it is to expect a pig not to grunt.
POlICE COMMISSIONER’S MANTRA: THINK of the HEADlINES
The reasons and circumstances given by Police Commissioner Rajendra Sharma for the murder of the gas company employee Pramod Routray are a textbook case of how not to conduct an investigation. Sharma likes to be known as a hands-on Commissioner unlike his immediate predecessor who was a distant figure even to his own DCPs. But sometimes he is too carried away like a kid in a candy store. He had gushingly told the media in all lurid details that Pramod’s sexual perversion was the reason why his wife Trupti had killed him. But Pramod’s mother and brother rubbished the Commissioner’s characterisation as a travesty of truth. Instead, they accused Trupti of sexual promiscuity and deliberately committing the heinous crime to grab her husband’s property. Their revelation forced the police not to treat it as open-and-shut case as the Commissioner had tom-tommed before but to look afresh at it from all possible angles. Whatever may be the truth that will finally emerge out of the detailed forensic investigation by the police, the Commissioner was clearly in the wrong by rushing to the media without even talking to Pramod’s closest relatives like his mother and brother. The credulous Commissioner blindly relied on the version of the main accused and didn’t care to dig below the surface to uncover if a more complex plot existed. That the murder victim’s mother and brother didn’t form part of the probe is the classic case of a botched-up investigation. If the Commissioner conducts such types of cack-handed investigation, he certainly needs professional help.
A rush job like this meets no conceivable definition of fair investigation. Sharma should focus on high-quality investigation that looks at all the angles in a balanced and unprejudiced manner. He should resist the temptation of parachuting in front of the TV camera to exultantly claim credit on the basis of half-baked investigations. One more indiscretion like this would certainly take the public perception of the Commissioner’s immaturity one step closer to reality.
(saratpattanayak@hotmail.com (M) 9437962121)