The fear of losing power makes rulers hyperactive. This has now begun happening with Punjab's all powerful father-son duo. They have started taking steps to refurbish the Akali-BJP government's image which had started nosediving soon after its formation in 2007 due to its non-performance and the coalition partners conflicting interests.

Sukhbir Singh has an image of a dynamic young leader with immense organizational capability, the qualities he abundantly demonstrated in the 2007 Assembly elections which helped his party ascend to power. On the other hand, the soft-spoken Parkash Singh Badal has a long political experience which has made him a shrewd political operator. His mild nature and untiring capacity to campaign are his main strengths which enabled him to become Chief Minister four times -in 1970, 1977, 1997 and 2007. Both the Badals are employing their qualities to refurbish the Akali-BJP government's image. They are laying foundation stones and inaugurating railway overbridges and underbridges, Bhawans, Circuit Houses and model schools amidst an expensive media publicity blitz. They are also endeavouring to assuage the agitating sections of people.

Corruption cases are usually the Achilles heel of ruling politicians. They use all possible means to escape conviction. The Badals obviously realized that the on-going corruption and disproportionate assets case against them, if proved, would hit their image and also their 2012 electoral prospects. The case was registered against them by Punjab Vigilance Bureau during Capt. Amarinder Singh's regime. Charges were framed against the Badals and some other Akali leaders on March 9, 2007. But during the hearing, over two-thirds of the 137 witnesses including Vigilance Bureau investigators, retracted from their previous statements. One need not speculate about the reasons behind the prosecution witnesses turning hostile.

When the case was set to fall flat after both the prosecution and the defence counsels submitted that there was no incriminating evidence against the Badals and it was a fit case for acquittal, the vigilant Special Judge Rajinder Aggarwal, finding loopholes in the prosecution's stand on certain aspects of the case, summoned some of the witnesses including those from whom the Badals in their income tax returns had claimed to have taken loans.

The trial court said that the case records showed that the persons from whom the loan was allegedly raised by the Badals were examined by the Investigation Officer but all of them said they had not advanced any loan to the Badals. The court also summoned the Registrar of Companies asking him to bring the records pertaining to Orbit Resorts, Gurgaon which the prosecution had shown as owned by the Badals.

During their reexamination, the three witnesses who had earlier denied having given loans to the Badals said they had given loans to them. They, however, failed to produce the records of the loans which the court had asked them to bring. The Registrar of Companies in its deposition also said that the records containing the extent of shareholdings and total capital of the Orbit Resorts between 1997 and 2002 had been destroyed.

The trial judge said “Though this evidence (about the non-existent loan transactions) is of vital importance in a case relating to prosecution of disproportionate assets by the accused, it is quite strange that the prosecution has not touched this aspect of the case at the time of leading evidence.”

The Badals' is not the lone case where efforts have been made to influence the process of law by the ruling party's powerful leaders. Another is the on-going case of the murder of Harpreet Kaur, daughter of former Shiromani Gurdwara Pabandhak Committee chief Bibi Jagir Kaur in which the mother is the accused. When the police had refused to register Kamaljit's complaint about his wife's murder on April 27, 2000 he approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court which directed the CBI to conduct an inquiry. After a probe, the CBI registered an FIR against Bibi Jagir Kaur on October 3, 2000. The complainant Kamaljit Singh, husband of Harpreet, however, later turned hostile. On July 30, the CBI counsel alleged in the court that Kamaljit had taken Rs.3 crore from Bibi Jagir Kaur for turning hostile and action should be taken against him.

Whatever its final fate, the Badals disproportionate assets case is another example of how the powerful politicians try to use the state power to influence the process of justice. At the national level it is the CBI, once considered to be an independent agency commanding people's faith, has been losing its credibility by often acting as a tool of whichever government is in power. In the states, it is their respective Vigilance Bureaus which have become a partisan arm of their ruling bosses. The Punjab Bureau had registered the disproportionate assets case against the Badals when Capt. Amarinder Singh was in power. Now the same Bureau whose investigators have backtracked from their previous statements says the case is fit for acquittal!

The role of the trial judge in the Badals disproportionate assets case is another instance of the judiciary, besides the Press, playing the role of the watchdogs of justice and political and democratic values despite the shortcomings that have started creeping into their functioning. (IPA Service)