THE CASE OF THE RECKLESS ROMEO

Perry Mason novels were a childhood favourite. The intriguing cases, the beautiful defendants, the painstaking investigations, and finally the courtroom drama in which Mason dramatically turns the tables on the prosecution to secure the release of his client... They have all the ingredients of a pot-boiler. No wonder many a Perry Mason novel by his creator Erle Stanley Gardner ended up as absorbing TV plays. Many thrillers by other authors, featuring Perry Mason as the central character, also made it to the screens. One such story was The Case of the Reckless Romeo, 

telecast in the US in 1992.

The story bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Sunanda Pushkar case, which I am about to narrate. But then, the title could fit her husband Shashi Tharoor like a glove. And so I have used it here. 

Let us take a quick peek.

He : Born in 1956. Handsome. Suave. Flamboyant. Educated. A man of letters, who began writing with a regular column on Foreign Affairs in THE ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY OF INDIA. Rich. A junior minister in the Congress-led UPA government after a successful career in India’s foreign service. Twice married and twice divorced, with a roving eye for beauty. Snotty. Condescending and snobbish to the extent of publicly proclaiming that flying in the Economy section was “cattle class”...  

She : Born in 1962. Glamorous. Glitzy. Rich. Ambitious. A social climber using her undeniable charm to penetrate elitist fortresses. Twice married and twice divorced. All ready for a third engagement with matrimony, provided the terms were right...

When they met, they felt they were made for each other. A dream, year-long courtship, almost entirely before media flashlights, ended in their marriage in 2010. Sunanda Pushkar became Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor.

Theirs was a dream alliance.

Man and Wife were inseparable. Like Mary's little lamb, wherever Sunanda went, Shashi went. He hardly ever left her alone. They could often be spotted walking hand in hand or Sunanda possessively caressing Shashi’s hair or unabashedly pecking him on the cheek. His friends admired these juvenile demonstrations. And his critics chided him by saying Shashi Tharoor ought to have been made the minister of ‘love affairs’.

The couple’s idyllic world, however, turned sour and on January 17, 2014, Sunanda Pushkar was found dead in a suite in the Leela Palace Hotel in Delhi under mysterious circumstances. 

A few months earlier, reports had surfaced that the Shashi-Sunanda marriage was heading towards disaster after Mehr Tarar, a beautiful Pakistani journalist, whom Sunanda termed an ISI agent, entered Tharoor’s life. Domestic helps and close friends talked about frequent verbal and sometimes physical spats between Shashi and Sunanada on Mehr Tarar's account. In fact, even though the couple had flown in together to Delhi a day before her death, they had bitterly fought over Tarar on the flight (Sunanda had even locked herself into the flight toilet, much to the amusement and chagrin of fellow travellers) and later in the airport. As a result they had chosen not to go to their plush Lodhi Estate home. They had instead come to Leela Palace separately and checked into separate rooms. After hours of confabulations, which involved some common friends, the couple finally put out a joint statement to scotch rumours that their marriage was on the rocks. They claimed that all differences had been resolved and they were again “happily married”. Thereafter, they shifted jointly to Suite number 345.

During the rest of their stay, Shashi Tharoor kept himself out of her hair by “busying” himself with party affairs, while Sunanda was left pretty much to herself with a domestic help, Narayan Singh, at hand to attend to personal needs.

On the fateful day, Tharoor returned at around 8 PM from an AICC meeting, only to find his wife lying dead in their hotel room. More than an hour later, he informed the Delhi police about his wife’s death. The police recovered the body from the hotel and sent it for autopsy. According to initial reports, Sunanda was suspected to have committed suicide. Later reports stated that the cause of death was “unnatural”. Dr Adarsh Kumar, who was part of the AIIMS team that conducted the post mortem, told the media that Sunanda’s arms had injury marks that appeared to have been caused by a “blunt instrument. Sources added that there was a bite mark on the left hand and several blue coloured contusions on her right hand, which could not have been self-inflicted. Yet the doctors, in all their wisdom, said these injuries may or may not be the cause of death. The autopsy report indicated that she died of drug overdose, most likely a combination of sedatives, other strong medicines and probably alcohol. Strips of Alprax, an anti-depressant, was found in her purse as well as in the room. This led the investigators to suspect that a suicidal overdose of this could have led to her death.

In a statement to investigators, Shashi Tharoor said : "Our married life was very happy and some misunderstanding which was there was cleared and she was happy about it." He also revealed that his wife was "a very happy personality" but was very ill after two surgeries. She was dependent on Alprax tablets to sleep, he said. Days before her death, Pushkar had been admitted to a hospital in Kerala for suspected lupus. Tharoor said she was discharged on January 14,  2014, after which they came to Delhi. In his statement to the magistrate, Tharoor claimed he had gone to Jaipur that day, and had come back to the hotel at 8 PM.  

"I decided to wake up Sunanda at 8.30 PM. I entered the bedroom of the suite asking 'darling how are you feeling,' there was no reply. I placed my hand on her forehead to check for fever and found it very cold. Her hands were stiff. I immediately called the doctors and the hotel management. But it was already too late."

Doctors at Kerala Institute of Medical Sciences in Trivandrum, who had examined her a few days earlier however claimed that Sunanda did not have any serious health problems, thereby raising serious doubts about the truthfulness of Tharoor’s claims. 

On 1 July 2014, the controversy over her death deepened when AIIMS doctor Sudhir Gupta, who headed the team that conducted the post mortem on Sunanda’s body claimed that he was pressured "by top officials" to submit a false report in the case to the effect that Sunanda died a "natural death". He claimed that he was being targeted because he did not bow to the pressure and gave a report stating that Sunanda's death was caused by drug poisoning that could be either suicidal or homicidal. Dr Gupta claimed he was prevented from telling the truth in his report due to Shashi Tharoor and Ghulam Nabi Azad's influence. In order to prove that the autopsy report was influenced, Dr Gupta has also submitted details of emails exchanged between the AIIMS director and Tharoor, thereby implying that the “top official” he had referred to was the Director himself.

Shashi Tharoor, however, maintained that he has, since the beginning, not created any obstacle in the investigation process. He said that he was cooperating fully with the police fulfilling all the formalities that are required by the investigation authorities.

On October 10, 2014 the medical team probing Sunanda’s death concluded that she had died of poisoning. On November 10, the hotel room, where she was found dead and which had been locked under the seal of the Delhi Police, was re-examined by police and forensic experts. Police officials claimed that during this examination, they had stumbled upon fluid marks on the bed and the carpet and a broken glass in suite number 345 of Leela Palace hotel. How such tell-tale evidences could have been ignored in the first place is not clear and would definitely weaken the police case when it comes before a court for trial.

Forensic experts inform that the stains on the bed linen and carpet had been caused by urine. These coupled with the injuries on Sunanda’s body and some tell-tale prick-marks on her hands indicate a violent struggle and forced injection of a poison. The viscera report that was filed recently also indicated the presence of a rare poison forcing the forensic authorities to send viscera samples to Scotland Yard for a detailed analysis to identify the specific poison.

On January 6, 2015 Delhi Police reported that Sunanda was murdered and filed an FIR in the regard. 

Less than a week later, maverick politician and senior BJP leader Subramanium Swamy claimed that she had been administered a Russian poison which was unknown to Indian forensic experts. He stated that Sunanda's husband Tharoor was a part of the murder conspiracy. Adding to the string of accusations against Tharoor, Swamy challenged him to reveal the identity of the 'killers' to the police.The BJP leader also accused Tharoor of trying to cover up his wife's murder as a natural death. Giving a totally new twist to the sordid story, Swamy claimed that Sunanda had been put to death as she had wanted to tell the truth about some dubious dealings in the IPL. "Priyanka Gandhi’s husband, Robert Vadra's name would also have surfaced," he said.

Suddenly the case assumed new dimensions. What was once believed to be a straight forward suicide by the wife of a reckless Romeo has become a cause célèbre with political and financial ramifications. Which leads us to the questions : What was Sunanda’s Pushkar’s connection with IPL cricket? What was the damaging information she could have made public?  Who wanted to suppress the information so desperately as to warrant silencing her on a permanent basis? And in what way could Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law be linked to the whole sordid drama?

I shall go into these issues in my next post.

QUEEN'S ENGLISH -- SIMPLICITY IS THE KEY!

I never had a head for languages. Born a Malayalee, I studied in English medium schools with Hindi as my second language. Since I grew up in the Dravidianised Tamilnadu, though I learnt to speak Tamil well, I never had to learn Tamil as a language of study. So I never formally learnt to read or write Tamil (so much for the benefits of the two-language formula that is assiduously pursued by the Dravidian parties in the state). And since one does not have to speak even a word of Hindi in Tamilnadu, the spoken Hindi never developed. The result, the only language I can claim to know fairly well is English. Or so I thought...

Queen’s English of the bombastic variety particularly impressed me in my youth. My father it was who introduced me to this genre – the Johnsonian English named after Dr Samuel Johnson, who compiled the first comprehensive dictionary of English words, way back in 1755. I vividly remember a particular passage about  a famous public speaker, who was asked by a group of female students the secret of his success as an orator. He said :

“When promulgating you esoteric cogitations and articulating superficial, sentimental and psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your extemporaneous decantations and unpremeditated expectations have intelligibility and veracious veracity without rodomontade or trashonical bombast. Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pusillanimous vacuity, pestiferous profanity and similar transgressions.

“In short”, he smilingly explained to his open mouthed admirers, “talk simply, naturally and above all do not use big words”.

I was so impressed with the first part of his monologue that I mugged it up, totally losing sight of the second.  I worked hard to build up a vocabulary comparable to the great orator, but in vain.

Another writer who greatly impressed me was the inimitable P G Wodehouse. Here was a genius who played with words to weave a magical world of elitist British humour. The humorous way in which he describes how a British adventurer to Africa is mauled to death by a lion is subtly brought out in "Ring for Jeeves" (1953):

It was a confusion of ideas between him and one of the lions he was hunting in Kenya that had caused A B Spottsworth to make the obituary column. He thought the lion was dead, and the lion thought it wasn’t...

Or the inimitable manner in which, the suave, slick man of leisure, Smith, who spells his name with a P, introduces himself to a stranger in “Leave it to Psmith” :

. . . The name is Psmith.  P-smith.’

‘Peasmith, sir?’

‘No, no.  P-s-m-i-t-h.  I should explain to you that I started life without the initial letter, and my father always clung ruggedly to the plain Smith.  But it seemed to me that there were so many Smiths in the world that a little variety might well be introduced.  Smythe ,I look on as a cowardly evasion. Nor do I approve of the too prevalent custom of tacking another name on in front by means of a hyphen.  So I decided to adopt the Psmith.  The P, I should add for your guidance, is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan.  You follow me?’

Having waded through all this, I prided myself over the quality of my own English. Until I joined the ILLUSTRATED WEEKLY OF INDIA.

During my very first month of training, I was once asked to do a one pager on environmental pollution. I spent a whole evening in a library researching. I sat through the night typing out the story. Those were the days when the humble type-writer ruled and computers had not yet entered our lives. I typed and re-typed the report three times before I was satisfied. The next morning, with a song in my heart and expectations high of my first report in the publication, I handed over my work to my Editor, Pritish Nandy. His face clouded as he read the report. Half way through he virtually exploded. “What *@#%%^* nonsense have you written?” he asked, throwing the papers at my face. I just stood and stuttered, not knowing what hit me. Could there have been some misreporting or distortion of facts? Or could I have made some stupid grammatical mistake? But then, I had read and re-read the report several times over. And to my knowledge there was nothing wrong. Frankly, I just did not know what had upset Nandy.

“How far have you studied”, he asked me, still fuming. “I have done my post graduation”, I stammered. “No wonder you write bilge like this...” he said. He grabbed the report from my hands and read out one sentence. “Tell me,” he challenged, “how many people would understand that sentence? Do you think all the readers of the WEEKLY are post graduates like you? KP, learn to write for the common man. Write in a language he understands. That is the only way we can make this magazine sell... I want the WEEKLY to carry stuff relevant to its readers. I don’t want it to be a forum for its writers to exhibit their superior knowledge of the English language...”

He really had me there. How true it was. Language was essentially meant for communication. What I have to say has to be understood by the other man. Otherwise, it is as good as not saying it. This was when I suddenly realised the import of the second part of the Johnsonian passage I had quoted earlier. I had to communicate simply, naturally and above all, without using big words.

From that day, I went about dumbing down my language. Compound and complex sentences were out. So also were the pompous, big-sounding words. Very soon, the subbing desk at the WEEKLY had developed a “Weekly Style”, especially for our catchy intros. A typical intro to an investigative report on the assassination of Indira Gandhi would, for example, read thus :

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi dead. Murdered in cold blood by her own body guards. Where did it happen? When How? Why? Who is behind it? The Illustrated Weekly investigates...

Short, crisp, staccato sentences... Absolutely no frills. Yet juicy enough to whet one’s appetite for the details.

Times keep changing. From simplifying, we have moved on to over-symplifying. Samuel Johnson is unknown to today’s generation. Wodehouse belongs to another planet. The world does not even have time for the staccato “Weekly style” of the language, as we have stepped into the short messaging service (sms) era. Sometimes I am flummoxed by some messages I get. “Wen r u cumin?” asks one. “Got 2 c tha dr”, says another...

All this reminds me of a joke that was forwarded to me some months ago :

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded the German demand that English spelling had some room for improvement. She accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".  Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with the "f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expected to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it shud go away.

By the 4th yer pepl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords containing "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.

Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evri vun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united Urop vil finali kum tru.

If all this looks like German, then obviously, by conceding for a European English, the Germans have managed to bring in German as the official language of the whole of Europe!

Long live the Queen’s English... Where simplicity is the key.

TAMILNADU'S POLITICAL ORPHANS

The people of Sri Lanka have had their say. In the just-concluded elections, Mahinda Rajapakshe (with a vote percentage of 47.58) has been voted out of power as the all-powerful President of the island nation. Even Salman Khan’s overt support could not save him. In his place, the combined opposition candidate, Maithripala Sirisena (with 51.28% of the votes polled), has been installed with a narrow, but decisive mandate.

None can grumble about the verdict. The elections were conducted in a peaceful atmosphere. Since the incumbent actually lost, no one can accuse Rajapakshe of having rigged the polls. With nearly 70 percent polling in the Northern and Eastern Districts, there can be no talk about the long-suppressed Tamils being kept out of the electoral process. No one can even accuse Rajapakshe of having tried to stymie a smooth transition of power. Even as the trends were established, he had tweeted conceding defeat. And by evening, he had even graciously vacated his Temple Trees Presidential  residence to make room for his successor (a gesture that many Indian politicians would do well to emulate).

In the final analysis, the ruthlessly brutal annihilation of the LTTE, which propelled him to his second term in power, proved to be Rajapakshe’s undoing. At a time when he was being pilloried for his war excesses by the international community, the Tamil population of Serendip hammered in the last nail on his political coffin with their decisive vote.

Rajapakshe’s defeat has been hailed by the so-called Tamil nationalists of Tamilnadu. Dubbed as the “butcher of the Tamil race”, his loss was celebrated by many political groups in Tamilnadu with the bursting of fire crackers and the distribution of sweets. But what these worthies lose sight of is the fact that this could well bet their own last hurrah.

For several years now, Mahinda Rajapakshe has been the favourite whipping horse of outfits like the Dravidar Kazhagam, Vaiko’s MDMK, Seeman’s Naam Thamizhar Katchi and Thol Tirumavalavan’s Viduthala Chiruthaikal Katchi. With the fall of Rajapakshe, these outfits will become political orphans without a cause. For they had over the years focussed solely on the Sri Lankan Tamils’ problems to the total exclusion of local issues. Years have been spent on emotional rabble-rousing on the Sri Lankan Tamils issue. Velupillai Pirabhakaran, the slain LTTE supreme, has been eulogised to the level of a demi-god. And Rajapakshe has been for them a whipping horse which could not kick back at them. Now suddenly, with the electoral fall of Rajapakshe, these Tamil Nationalist gasbags will find themselves bereft of gas to keep themselves afloat. With the Tamils of Sri Lanka, themselves having endorsed Sirisena’s candidature, these political non-entities, who together do not have the support of even 3% of the Tamilnadu electorate, but who are responsible for almost 97% of the political noise, cannot rave or rant against him. At least not for the time being.

As the new government in Sri Lanka gets down to business, it will be interesting to see how the “Tamil Nationalists” of Tamilnadu re-orient and re-position themselves. Whether they will continue harping on the Sri Lankan Tamils’ issue, which had never really become a poll decider in Tamilnadu, or whether they will look for issues of local relevance to make themselves politically relevant in the years to come.

Post Script :If Karunanidhi’s utterances at the just-concluded General Council of the DMK party (most of the “Tamil Nationalist” parties have always indirectly looked up to Karunanidhi for direction) are any indication, their guns will now be trained on Narendra Modi and the “saffron brigade”. As the gloves come off and the rumble starts let us sit back and see who will ultimately emerge the winner in this bout. 

THE DILEMMA OF BEING MUTHUVELAR KARUNANIDHI

The leadership tussle in the DMK party, one of the oldest regional parties in the country, has been satisfactorily resolved. There is no likelihood of the party splitting or splintering on this issue. At least not yet. The 93-year-old party supremo, Muthuvelar Karunanidhi will be succeeded as party President by none other than himself! What is more, when Tamilnadu goes to polls in 2016, it will project Karunanidhi, who will by then be close to 95 as the Chief Ministerial candidate. And by the time he completes his term in office, he would go down in history as the first person to head a state at 100!! 

Similarly, the post of party General Secretary, hitherto held by the 95-year-old K Anbazhagan will go to Anbazhagan himself! Anbazhagan will hold the Finance portfolio in Karunanidhi’s 2016 cabinet and will enter the Guinness Book for being the oldest Finance Minister in the world! 

How lucky we, the people of Tamilnadu are. As we prepare to face the new challenges posed by a world that is changing every minute, we shall be the only people to be steered and guided by two “centurions” with close to 200 years of combined political experience propelling them... And in the end, what a simple solution to the sibling war that was threatening to tear the DMK asunder... A solution that was staring everyone in the face but was missed as everyone kept looking for successors to Karunanidhi within his own family! 

The DMK party in Tamilnadu, has over the last five decades, weathered many a storm. A split in the party triggered by the exit of M G Ramachandran @ MGR in 1972 and the consequent loss of power, another split in 1992 when Vaiyapuri Gopalasamy @ Vaiko quit, were all managed by Karunanidhi with varying degrees of success as he kept the DMK’s ship afloat.

But one thing the Machiavellian found difficult to quell was the rebellion he faced from within his own family. The reason for this, probably, was because these problems were his own creation. In his keenness to ensure that there were no challenges to his leadership, ever, he blew life into too many paper tigers in his family. The fact that he was thrice married, and he had issues through each of his wives has only compounded his problems by increasing the number of felines in the arena. And today, it is these paper tigers that are baring their claws and growling at each other, giving him sleepless nights.

Let us look at the facts.

As early as 1977, Karunanidhi had dropped hints that he would be succeeded in politics by his son M K Stalin. Stalin had all the necessary qualifications to be a politician. He had been named after the Russian dictator Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili Stalin, who, ironically, died four days after M K Stalin was born. He was thorough and meticulous as a student, never loathe to spend an additional year or two in any class till he had got the essentials right. As a result, several batches of old students of Madras Christian College School still legitimately claim with pride that  they belonged to Stalin’s batch. And, above all, after Karunanidhi’s government was dismissed by Indira Gandhi in 1976 during the Emergency, the 23-year-old Stalin had been jailed for some months after being accused of indulging in eve teasing and unruly behaviour in public places. This enabled him to later don the mantle of a martyr of the notorious Emergency...

But Stalin’s climb to the top of the DMK party’s hierarchy was thwarted by his own father’s ambitions. Unlike a Mulayam, who made way to his progeny, Karunanidhi was unprepared to relinquish control over the party even to his own son. So till the normal age of superannuation in government service, Stalin remained head of the DMK’s youth brigade. For decade after decade, the DMK’s geriatric club headed by Karunanidhi continued to control the party, and whenever the DMK was elected to power, they controlled the state government too.

In 2004, when the Manmohan Singh Government was installed in power in Delhi with the support of the DMK, Karunanidhi saw in it an opportunity for himself to play kingmaker in national politics. He also had his eyes set on a gubernatorial post if not the nation's Presidentship. To facilitate his climb, he got his grand nephew Dayanidhi Maran, who was proficient in Hindi and English, to be his pointsman in Delhi. Dayanidhi, always sporting a broad grin, unlike his surly father, became Union minister of Telecom and was a daily visitor to the residence of Sonia Aunty. While his new position helped Dayanidhi’s brother Kalanidhi to build up his media empire and amass wealth, it however did not bring Karunanidhi the benefits he had hoped for. 

Dayanidhi’s frequent appearance on his brother’s TV channels during his visits to Tamilnadu, his moving around in a red-beaconed car with police security and his growing affluence raised the hackles of Azhagiri, Stalin’s uncouth elder brother, who from the mid-1980s had been content with lording it over Madurai and the southern districts of Tamilnadu grabbing land, terrorising businessmen and generally indulging in all the unsavoury activities that the spoilt sons of powerful politicians normally do. Azhagiri made his statement in his inimitable style, sending a bunch of hoodlums to devastate the offices of Dinakaran newspaper in Madurai, belonging to the Maran brothers. In the orgy, an entire office was vandalised and burnt to ashes. And three innocent employees were killed.

Forced to take a stand, Karunanidhi, who was Chief Minister of Tamilnadu at that time, chose to justify the violent deeds of his son and withdrew Dayanidhi Maran from the Union cabinet. He also publicly severed his connections with the Maran brothers and their Sun TV network and launched his own TV network as a rival.

Azhagiri now upped his ante. “You’ve made my younger brother a minister in the state and my upstart nephew a Union Minister while you yourself are happily enjoying the office of Chief Minister. What about me?” he is said to have shouted at Karunanidhi. And doting father that he was, Karunanidhi obliged in the very next elections by getting the prodigal son elected to Parliament and making him also a Union Minister. During his forgettable tenure, Azhagiri had the dubious distinction of never answering a question relating to his ministry in Parliament. In fact, he rarely used to attend Parliament and quit the post in 2013, when the DMK, sensing the eclipse of the UPA under Manmohan Singh, pulled out of the Government altogether.

In the meantime, Karunanidhi’s ambitious third wife Rajathi pushed the claims of her daughter Kanimozhi for a slice of the patriarch’s political legacy. Karunanidhi obliged by making his darling daughter a member of the Rajya Sabha, from which position she managed to plunge headlong into the infamous 2G scam.

The trappings of ministership, albeit for a brief term, had whetted Azhagiri’s appetite for political power. He was no longer interested in lording it over his den of thugs. So he began positioning himself as the real successor of Karunanidhi rather than his younger brother Stalin. This proved to be a slap in the face of Stalin, who had patiently been waiting for all of four decades for his father to hang up his gloves before stepping into his shoes. 

With both brothers engaging in shadow boxing, Karunanidhi’s Gopalapuram home became a war zone. And with the noose tightening on Kanimozhi in the 2G case, his visits to Rajathi’s CIT Nagar residence became nightmarish. With everything he had always loved -- his families and party -- on the verge of collapse, the only thing Karunanidhi could do to stem the rot was to announce to the world that he was continuing as head of the DMK, ad infinitum. 

And this was an announcement he would have made with great happiness. For if there is one thing Karunanidhi loves more than anything else, it is himself.

WHO KILLED THIS MAN - 2 (ANNANAGAR RAMESH -- SUICIDE OR HOMICIDE)

Ramesh Narayanan, better known as Annanagar Ramesh (because he used to stay in a posh villa in H Block of Annanagar in Chennai), was an intimate crony of M K Stalin, the son and heir apparent of DMK supremo M Karunanidhi. Ramesh was a civil engineering contractor and was earlier very close to former AIADMK minister S D Somasundaram. He had managed to get close to Stalin in 1996 after the annihilation of the AIADMK in the hustings that year. His closeness to Stalin was so well known that ticket-seekers from the DMK who wished to contest elections in 2001, queued outside Ramesh’s high-walled residence requesting him to make a reference to his friend. Stalin too was a regular visitor to Ramesh’s house and his car could be seen entering the massive gates on many a night. When Mr. Stalin began his campaign in the Thousand Lights constituency, Ramesh drove the open jeep during the first leg at Stalin’s insistence. The general talk in political circles was that Ramesh was Stalin’s conscience keeper and was privy to all his secrets, both official and personal.

In May 2001, the DMK party was voted out and the AIADMK under Jayalalithaa took over the reins of power in the state. Shortly after, cases were registered against Stalin, who had been the Mayor of Chennai Corporation, on charges of large scale corruption in awarding of contracts for the construction of road traffic over-bridges in Chennai city. It was alleged that the Corporation had suffered a loss of Rs 12 Crores because of the irregularities in the construction of these fly-overs. The media at that time was rife with rumours about the impending arrest of Stalin and his associates in connection with these cases.

At 7:45 AM on July 16, the Tirumangalam Police Station in Annanagar received a phone call informing that Annanagar Ramesh and his entire family was dead in their house. The call came from C K V Ramanan, a relative of Ramesh. Police, on arrival, found the 37 year old Ramesh, along with his 30-year-old wife Kanchana, and his three daughters, Monisha (10), Sharmila (9) and Tinku (11 months) lying dead on their bed. By their side was a suicide note said to have been written by Ramesh, some bottles of soft drinks and glasses, apart from an empty container of insecticide.

The two-page suicide note claimed that one Deivasigamani had foisted a false case against Ramesh and hence he was taking this extreme step (of mass suicide), as he feared that his image would be hurt. T G Deivasigamani, also a contractor, had named Ramesh as the conduit for a Rs 7 crore bribe allegedly paid by him to Stalin and former Highways Minister Tha Kiruttinan for a road-laying contract. “I have not taken a single paisa. Now I fear I may be implicated in a heroin-related case”, said Ramesh, in his suicide note. He requested Chief Minister Jayalalithaa to intervene and tell the police not to foist false cases on ordinary people like himself. “My wife and I took this decision ten days ago and we are implementing it now. We think it is better to end our lives than face these cases and be labelled in the press as one who received commissions'', he said.

Ramanan, for his part claimed that Ramesh had called him up the previous day and requested him to give a wake-up call at 5:30 AM. He had personally gone to Ramesh’s house to wake him up. When there was no response to the door bell, he had opened the door and gone inside only to find the entire Ramesh family lying dead on the bed. In a state of panic, he had raised a cry bringing neighbours on to the scene. Someone had then advised him to inform the police and that was how he ended up calling the police station, he said.

Both the DMK and the AIADMK went about interpreting the case in a manner that suited them. The DMK painted Ramesh as a victim of police harassment. The party petitioned the State Human Rights Commission on the issue. The DMK complaint claimed : “frequent threatening visits by the Anna Nagar police to Ramesh's residence to extract statements which will suit their evil schemes created panic in the minds of the family. The police intentionally harassed Ramesh and his family, thereby creating mental agony and pain”. The SHRC, for its part, issued orders to the Dean of Kilpauk Medical College Hospital, where the post mortem was done, to produce the post mortem report and the videotapes taken at the time of autopsy to the Commission. The Commission also declared that as per the law, abetment death was a violation of human rights, implying that the police machinery would be hauled up if harassment leading to the mass suicide was established.

The then City Police Commissioner, Muthukaruppan claimed that though Deivasigamani had filed a complaint against Ramesh 45 days earlier, the police had not questioned Ramesh or his family members and as such there was no justification for the claim of police harassment. Doubting the veracity of the suicide note, he said it was being sent to handwriting experts for analysis. Stating that cyanide and not pesticide was the cause of death, he asked why there was a gap of 10 days between taking a joint decision to commit suicide and actually doing it. Claiming that there were several loose ends in the case, the COP also wondered why Ramanan had taken 2 hours between discovering the bodies and informing the police.

The AIADMK party chipped in by insinuating that Ramesh knew all of Stalin’s secrets and his suicide had been abetted by the DMK leader to ensure that a road in police investigation was permanently closed.

There the case lies even today. Two governments have changed since the deaths took place. Both the DMK and the AIADMK have wielded power. Yet the truth has never come out either from the police or from the State Human Rights Commission.

What really did happen to Annanagar Ramesh? Did he commit suicide or was he and family members murdered? We may never know.

WHO KILLED THIS MAN - 1 (THE CURIOUS CASE OF THA KIRUTTINAN)

The effectiveness of a police system is always judged by its ability to solve crimes and bring the perpetrators to book. A crime of passion is relatively more difficult to solve unless there is a confession or an eyewitness. This is because the offenders, in such cases, rarely have a criminal record. But when it comes to planned, cold-blooded crimes, though the police are often led on a wild goose chase through the sheer meticulousness of the operation, the long arms of law inevitably catch up. The modus operandi used, the clues unwittingly left behind, the life and track record of the victims, telephone records, the statements of friends, relatives and associates, all inevitably point to the identity of the criminal. 

It is the ability of the Tamilnadu Police to use technology and intelligent investigative techniques to crack the toughest of cases that has led to its inevitable comparison with globally acclaimed agencies like the Scotland Yard.

But blotting this track record are some high profile, celebrity murders which, despite the lapse of several years, have defied solution.

Who killed these persons? Why? Will the killers ever be brought to book? Why are the Tamilnadu government and the investigative agencies (both state and Central) twiddling their thumbs on these cases? The people would like to know. 

In this series of blog posts, I have attempted to highlight the facts and circumstances relating to six "unsolved" celebrity murders and leave it to readers to judge the rest...

THA KIRUTTINAN – TURNING IN HIS GRAVE...

The year 2003. The AIADMK under J Jayalalithaa was in power in Tamilnadu. Pasumpon Tha Kiruttinan, Highways Minister in the earlier DMK regime was on May 20, 2003 hacked to death while on his morning walk near his residence in Madurai. During the investigations, family members of Kiruttinan revealed that the murder was the fall out of political rivalry. DMK supremo Karunanidhi’s son Azhagiri was behind the incident, they said, as Kiruttinan belonged to the Stalin faction of the DMK and was a stumbling block in Azhagiri’s advancement in the party.

The police conclusion was that on May 18, Azhagiri had planned to "eliminate" Kiruttinan. His associate, Essar Gobi (later to become a councillor in Madurai Corporation) was entrusted with the task of executing the murder. P M Mannan (later to become the Temple City's Deputy Mayor) was directed to render all assistance to him. On May 19, Mannan, Gobi, Mubaraq Manthiri and V Sivakumar @ "Karate" Siva met in a hotel on Town Hall Road to finalise the plot. Ibrahim Sulaiman Sait and Mubaraq Manthiri were fixed as assailants. Armed with the weapons provided by Gobi, the assailants stabbed Kiruttinan to death at around 6 AM.

The next day Azhagiri was arrested on charges of conspiring the murder. Mannan, Essar Gobi, Mubaraq Manthiri and "Karate" Siva were arrested a couple of days later, while Ibrahim Sulaiman Sait surrendered on May 27. Very soon charges were framed and trial got under way in the Madurai sessions court.

The year 2006. The DMK under Karunanidhi had come to power in Tamilnadu. Efforts were immediately initiated to get Azhagiri and friends freed from the case. M Muthuramalingam, an AIADMK functionary and one of the witnesses in the case, moved the Supreme Court of India alleging harassment by the police to change his testimony. Based on this petition, the Supreme Court ordered the trial to be shifted to Chittoor District Court in Andhra Pradesh. The apex court also directed that the entire records of the case in Tamil be translated into English and Telugu. Interestingly, these translations were not done by an official translator but was done at the instance of the accused themselves, by Mohammed Jinnah, a State-level office-bearer of the youth wing of the ruling DMK party. Further, various persons connected with the murder case, were conferred plum government posts. To cut a long story short, a systematic and calculated attempt was made at subverting the due process of law and undermining the sanctity of the orders passed by the apex court.

The year 2008. Karunanidhi was into his second year in office as the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, and had every reason to feel happy. He had first made use of the media empire built up by his nephew, Kalanidhi Maran to win power. He then made use of another nephew, Dayanidhi Maran, who knew English and Hindi, to consolidate his position in Delhi. Thereafter he discarded both his nephews and instead positioned his daughter Kanimozhi as a Member of Parliament. He went about assiduously grooming his son Stalin to be his political successor, while his wives, Dayalu and Rajathi built a financial base which would put the Ambanis to shame! His grand children and sundry relatives by now owned TV channels, furniture showrooms, real estate ventures, gaming centres, film production houses, you name it...

The only sore point in Karunanidhi’s happiness at that point of time was his son Azhagiri, who stood charged with the murder of one-time DMK minister Tha Kiruttinan. But days before he completed his second year in office, Karunanidhi made sure that this matter was also solved to his complete satisfaction and paved the way for Azhagiri’s elevation as Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers in 2009.

M K Azhagiri and 12 others, who were charged with having conspired and murdered Tha Kiruttinan, were acquitted by the court in Chittoor in May 2008 (he became Union Minister in 2009). In the course of the trial, 81 of the 82 witnesses, including Kiruttinan’s brother Ramiah, turned hostile. (Ramiah later joined the AIADMK and claimed that he had been under threat of his life to change his testimony.) The only witness who testified against Azhagiri was Muthuramalingam, who had got the case transferred to Chittoor in the first place. The prosecution (read the State under Azhagiri’s father, Karunanidhi) pushed a weak case. As a result, even Ibrahim Sait and Mubaraq Manthiri, who were alleged to have actually executed the killing, and who had filed confessional statements, were exonerated.

No appeal was madein the case, which was conveniently closed by the state police. It was only in September 2013, after a gap of five years, when the AIADMK under Jayalalithaa returned to power that a leave petition was filed in the Supreme Court by the state, challenging the order of the Chittoor court. However, this petition was quashed by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the state of Tamilnadu had no locus standi in the case as it had been transferred to another state and that only the government of Andhra Pradesh could appeal against the lower court judgement. The Government of Andhra Pradesh couldn’t care less.

Tha Kiruttinan must have turned in his grave. 

There the case rests, more than a decade later. If Azhagiri and friends did not kill Kiruttinan, then who did? Who will answer this question -- the government of Tamilnadu, the government of Andhra Pradesh, the Supreme Court of India???