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[Editor’s
Note: We are reproducing an article that appeared in “Indian Currents”
magazine. It is written by A J Philip, a veteran journalist, who has
worked with several mainstream newspapers in India. He has spent several
years in Bihar as a journalist.]

By A J Philip

Dear Shri Lalu Prasad Yadavji,

It is with a heavy heart that I write to you. I do not even know
whether you would receive this letter in the Ranchi jail where you are
incarcerated. My fervent prayer is that you get it and read it.

We met just twice. The first time was when I went to the state guest
house at Patna to interview the visiting Haryana Chief Minister, the
late Devi Lal, at the unearthly hour of 6 am. This was in the eighties..
You preferred to stand behind me when I interviewed him, may be out of
deference to the senior leader.

You must have found me a bother
as the Haryana strongman was in his elements and enjoyed answering my
questions. Once or twice you even hinted that I end the interview and
leave so that you could do some politicking.

The second time was
when I spent a whole afternoon at your residence, allotted to your wife
Rabri Devi as Chief Minister. You had just returned from appearing
before a court in what is known as the fodder scam. I wrote a column
entitled “Two days in Laloo land” after the interview. It also appeared
in a book authored by Prof K.C. Yadav, who exposed the hollowness of the
fodder scam.

I also wrote a lead article in the Indian Express
headlined “A House for Mr Biswas” in which I questioned the rationale
for extending the services of the CBI officer year after year to
continue his investigation against you.

I remember that you got
the article translated into Hindi and millions of its copies were
distributed all over the state, especially during a Garib Rally you
organised in Patna. The Hindustan Times, Patna, even published a boxed
item on my article reaching millions of hands.

The headline of
the article was based on the title of a novel written by Nobel-laureate
VS Naipaul. After the article appeared, reports came that some
“terrorists” from the Northeast were using UN Biswas’ house in Kolkata
as their hideout. In short, the super sleuth who was chosen to hound you
could not even prevent his own house becoming a safe haven for a
criminal gang!

We have a tradition of accusing every politician
of being corrupt, when we do not mind hiding our income when we file our
income tax returns or undervaluing a property while buying or selling
it or demanding and giving dowry at the time of marriage of our
children.

I have studied the politics of the fodder scam. What
happened was that some corrupt government officials in collaboration
with equally corrupt contractors were drawing money from the district
treasury against fake bills. This had started when Dr Jagannath Mishra
was Chief Minister and the practice continued even after you joined as
Chief Minister.

It was detected while you were in power by a
bureaucrat. Actually, you should have got the credit for busting the
racket but, what an irony of irony, you were accused as the lynchpin of
the racket and put behind bars!

I remember you of those days! You
were the uncrowned king of Bihar. You were the darling of the masses
and you even controlled national politics. Why should a Chief Minister
at whose appeal millions of people would raise any amount of money that
he needed for political work would stoop to the low level of hobnobbing
with fodder suppliers in a small district town? Even the thought was
ridiculous..

I knew Jagannath Mishra but I would never believe
that he encouraged the fodder suppliers to cheat the exchequer of
millions of rupees. It is like saying that Prime Minister Narendra Modi
should be held responsible if the money allotted by the Centre for
development work in, say Manipur, is swindled by the local
politician-bureaucrat-contractor lobby!

Or, to take another
recent example, diamond dealer Nirav Modi flew away from India after
cheating public sector banks of thousands of crores of rupees. A few
days before he did the vanishing act, he went to Davos and found himself
a place in the group photograph taken with Modi. Arun Jaitley was the
Finance Minister when he cheated the banks. Jaitley says the cheating
began when the UPA was in power.

Why did not the CBI take any
action against Modi and Jaitley of the BJP or P Chidambaram of the
Congress? Again, Vijay Mallya flew away carrying a dozen or so suitcases
after swindling the provident fund money of the employees of his
Kingfisher Airlines besides thousands of crores of rupees belonging to
several Indian banks. He was a Rajya Sabha member too! Could he have
fled without the connivance of those in power? Why was no action
initiated against the ministers concerned?

No, Sir, you are a
different kind of politician. I notice that every political party, be it
the Congress or the CPI or the CPM or the SP or the BSP, colluded with
the Sangh Parivar but you always remained aloof from it. I remember the
courage you showed when you arrested Lal Krishna Advani who was on a
dangerous mission, the moment he entered Bihar.

His Rath Yatra
was causing havoc to Hindu-Muslim unity and by arresting him, you could
avert needless shedding of blood of innocent people.

You could
not have realised at that time that you were wounding an elephant which
had elephantine memory and would not forget its tormentor. They found in
the fodder scam the perfect weapon to finish you.

Any sensible
person would have dismissed the charge against you as outlandish for it
did not stand to reason that a Chief Minister would join hands with a
petty thief to share his booty. The whole government apparatus was used
to nail you. So, what did they do?

They split the fodder scam
into several cases. It is now between 25 and 30 years since several such
cases were registered against you. The verdicts in all the cases have
not yet been delivered. It was all done with a purpose. In India,
multiple punishments have to be undergone concurrently but in your case,
you have to complete every sentence one after the other. The idea is to
ensure that you remain in jail till your end.

Recently, I was
shocked to see a photograph in which you were pushed into a train to go
to Delhi for treatment at the AIIMS. Was it not possible to send you by
air? I have a friend who keeps me posted about your health conditions.
That is how I know that your kidney no longer functions well. You also
have high blood pressure and diabetes. I also know that you had
undergone three heart surgeries.

You were the one who transformed
the Indian Railways and who introduced trains for the poor. You did not
think of wasting lakhs of crores of rupees to introduce a bullet train
between Patna and Delhi. That is why you were called to speak to the
students of Harvard on how you made the moribund railways a profitable
Organisation.

You are now 70, never jumped bail, never absented
from court hearings, never disobeyed any court order, and yet you are
not given bail. Where in the law book is written that a “convicted”
prisoner can be treated only in a government hospital? You may have
heard about R Balakrishna Pillai of Kerala. He was also punished for
corruption and sent to jail. He was admitted to a private hospital at
Thiruvananthapuram and remained in an air-conditioned room.

His
imprisonment was for one year but how many days did he remain behind
bars? Just a few weeks. I am sorry to say that the difference between
him and you is that he is a kshatriya and you a Yadav. Let me quote what
a friend wrote more in desperation than in anger:

“Let us look
at this in the light of the caste, class and community bias of our
elitist police, bar, and judiciary. Even the IAS officers convicted in
the fodder scam, who spent almost their entire lives in jail, were from
lower castes. “Finance commissioner Phool Singh was a Kurmi (vegetable
grower caste), Beck Julius was a tribal, K Arumugam and Mahesh Prasad
were from the Scheduled Castes. The then chief secretary, Vijay Shanker
Dubey, was found spotless, the then DC of Chaibasa Sajal Chakravarti was
convicted but got bail and even rose to be Chief Secretary of
Jharkhand. And co-accused Jagannath Mishra, ex-CM, in whose tenure the
scam began, and his kinsmen and co-accused IAS officer RS Dubey and so
many other Pathaks and Mishras have been let off, acquitted in the self
same case in which Lalu has been convicted and put behind bars”. To put
the record straight, Mishra was awarded imprisonment in a recent
verdict.

Among the IAS victims, I had an occasion to meet
Arumugam, whose office was close to mine at Patna. I had gone to invite
him to a function at our church. He had at that time no clue that he
would soon be behind bars!

A lady from my community, who I know
well, went to the court and obtained a decree that any convicted person
would be unseated from power. She was felicitated by everyone because
the first victim of the order was you. I wrote a column in which I
critically examined the order and found that the very premise on which
the petition was filed was wrong.

Any sensible state would have
given you bail so that your family could treat you well. If Congress
chief Sonia Gandhi and Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar could go to
the US for treatment, nothing should have prevented your family from
taking you there for treatment. But what did the CBI lawyer say in the
court opposing your bail application?

That you are an
incorrigible opponent of the NDA government and that you can mobilise
public opinion against the government etc. Are they grounds for denying
bail? Yet, you were denied bail. Now come to think of it, there is a
Union Cabinet Minister who uses her official machinery to let fugitive
cricket administrator Lalit Modi to travel outside of Britain.

I
felt really sad when I read your son Tejashwi Yadav’s tweet on April 25:
“Met my father after long for few minutes in AIIMS, Delhi. Worried
about his health. Didn’t observe much improvement. At his age, he needs
continuous care and monitoring of vital parameters.”

Yet, the
Centre has sent you back to Ranchi because your health has allegedly
improved. It appears that they do not want you to come out of the jail.
They fear that if you come out, their government in Bihar will collapse.
The thin ice on which Nitish Kumar skates was exposed when the BJP-JDU
lost the recent by-elections in the state.

Of course, you cannot
fight elections but your presence even as a silent campaigner in 2019 is
something which the BJP cannot stand. Hence the desire to keep you
behind bars. They are even capable of filing cases against your sons and
daughters for crimes committed even before they were born.

And
what is their own record? In one case against the BJP chief, forget the
witnesses, even the judge hearing the case mysteriously died!

In
Uttar Pradesh, there is a chief minister who has withdrawn cases against
himself and his party men. The charges range from murder to arson to
rioting. What an irony, they are “withdrawable” cases, whereas the 32 or
so cases registered against you are sacrosanct! My idea of calling you a
prisoner of conscience is not very original.

We have used the
term for Dr Binayak Sen, Soni Sori and Irom Sharmila. It fits you well
because you are in jail only because you were the only one who did not
compromise with the ruling dispensation and whom the Sangh Parivar
fears.

I can only hope that this letter finds you in better
health. You need the care of your wife and children and the company of
your grandchildren to keep you happy. I hope against hope that your
present health condition would prompt the powers that be to grant you
bail. There are many who erroneously think that you are “corrupt” but
they will realize your value only after you are gone. I hope that does
not happen and you are able to return to public life. For the present,
mine may appear a cry in the wilderness.

What about the conviction, some of my friends may ask me. To them, I can only say, Jesus too was convicted!

With all the best wishes and prayers
Yours etc
ajphilip@gmail.com
Courtesy: Indian Currents