When the police arrested a Thrissur-based businessperson the other day after he beat to pulp the security guard at his apartment complex, the question on many a lip was how he could have been roaming about with such impunity after his earlier doings. For, he had endangered his nine-year-old son’s life by letting him drive a Ferrari, which the doting father made into a video and uploaded on YouTube.
That was in April 2013, and the clip went viral. Two months later, he allegedly misbehaved with a woman police constable on duty, reportedly in an inebriated state. He flung open the door of his car and hauled the woman constable into his Rolls Royce as the cops stopped his car for a routine check.
The guard he beat up is fighting for his life in a private hospital. Close on the heels of the incident came the arrest of a budding actor and four young women from a flat owned by the businessperson in Kochi on charge of possessing narcotics. No wonder there was this question how the police let him off the hook so far when they were all alacrity to pounce on persons who led popular agitations or indulged in far lighter breach of the law. Interestingly, the question came from a former senior police officer during a TV channel discussion, and he probably raised the question knowing the answer.
The 55th State school festival had the fortune to see the ‘strategic management’ skills of the police top brass, who diplomatically utilised the students’ might to manage the show without much headache. The first step they took was the flawless deployment of Student Police Cadets (SPCs) at all the important festival venues to monitor the crowd and report law and order issues instantly to the police.
As a result, the civil police officers, who would have had to perform this taxing job, enjoyed an easy time. For most of them, it was time to get into the shoes of an old class leader and control their younger counterparts who were in full swing to take up the new assignment.
Similarly, another special team christened ‘Fest Force’ too came in support of the police to manage the peak time traffic and control the crowd at all busy junctions during the festival time. In support of these ‘cub cops’, a number of other student teams such as ‘Sanitation Army’ and ‘Student Brigade’ of the district panchayat too camped at the festival venue.
Even the shadow police team and special branch officials had bundles of confidential information on law and order issues on their mobile phones as the students competed to excel in their new roles as guardian angels. The delight at having made the ‘experiment’ a success was palpable on the face of one of the senior police officers in the city, who claimed at the end of the festival that the police had put in a ‘spectacular performance’ in event management at the school arts meet.
Controversies are nothing new to Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader M.V Jayarajan and some of them have landed him in trouble. The order of the Supreme Court upholding his conviction in the contempt of court case for his derogatory remark against judges is the latest in this series.
Mr. Jayarajan has declared that he is ready to accept the verdict. However, from his remarks, it appears that the CPI(M) leader and former MLA plans to lift the issue over the use of a pejorative word against the judges to a higher level. From what party sources say, the idea is to depict his controversial speech as having been part of his political activity as a Communist upholding the civic rights of the people.
The CPI(M) leadership has not officially commented on the development, but the sources suggest that the month-long jail sentence would be used for political campaigning, presenting Mr. Jayarajan as having been punished for upholding the right to stage public protests.
If the CPI(M) indeed does that, his return to jail and eventual release would turn out to be political spectacles for prime time TV. Whether or not that plan will yield political dividends, sharp-tongued eloquence appears likely to continue to be part of the everyday articulations of leaders like Mr. Jayarajan.
With inputs from
K. Santhosh (Thrissur), Mithosh Joseph (Kozhikode), and Mohamed Nazeer (Kannur)
