Monday, March 7, 2011

The Supreme scam

In a season of scams the Supreme Court has been left behind, but not by much. But considering that the 2 G , CWG etc have set the benchmarks, should we even consider the piddling 10 or 15 crores that the eminent justices have put together as a scam? My suggestion is that to qualify as a scam the amount involved should be a minimum 1000 crores or equivalent in US dollars. Else we will be insulting the likes of Raja and Kalamadi, and we want to be careful about doing that.

Then the Supreme court castigated the government and the Chief Vigilance Commissioner for devaluing the office of the CVC (maybe we should call it CVG , in keeping with 2G, Cwg etc).Apparently the commissioner caused a loss of 5.8 crores to the state of Gods own country, almost 20 years ago. Oh come on your lordships... 5.8 crores??? That is rounding error these days. Plus it was a loss to the state, and he did not make any money personally. Plus even after 20 years our venerable judicial system has still not had the time to deliver it's verdict on the matter, and I think that is the scam.

An Australian woman spent 33 years in a wheel chair waiting for our judicial system to pronounce judgement in a case of gross negligence by a hotel that forgot to keep it's swimming pool clean. Now I am not a lawyer,but remember reading somewhere that justice delayed is justice denied, and 33 years is a long time to establish the facts of a case. And after all that wait the poor woman got 5 crores. Come on your Lordships even the agency that did not clean the toilets in the Games village made off with more than that, and they did not even have to wait 33 days.

The Bofors case was finally put to rest almost 30 years after it rocked the nation. I think the original amount involved was 64 crores. No charges were filed and I am sure much more than 64 crores was spent of tax payees money to establish the fact that there was no crime committed and if there was, there was no perpetrator. The trail must have gone cold or the investigating agencies, in this case the CBI, realized that the amount involved was no longer worthy of being called a scam and lost all interest.

I think that the scam really is that it takes so long to investigate, so long to examine the evidence and so long to pronounce judgement. In this long period a more juicy scam has taken over our collective attention and this never ending need for more and more majestic scams will never end.
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