Five sent to jail in 33-year-old Robin Mayne case

More than three decades after the infamous ‘Robin Mayne’ scam was exposed, a special court for Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) cases here on Friday convicted and sentenced five persons to various terms of imprisonment and slapped a total fine of Rs. 1.65 crore.

The case relates to Robin Mayne, who claimed to be a close associate of former AIADMK Agriculture Minister Kalimuthu, and his accomplices conspiring to cheat nationalised banks by securing vehicle loans after producing fictitious persons and fake documents.

The accused cheated eight banks to the tune of Rs. 56 lakh in 1983.

Pronouncing the judgment XI Additional Special Judge for CBI cases K. Venkatasamy described the offence as a mega scam and said the accused were not ordinary people.

He said the former Minister (since dead) had abetted the crime by placing resources of his department at the disposal of the accused persons.

“Those entrusted with the task of apprehending thieves had themselves conspired to cheat banks and steal public money,” the judge said in his order.

According to the prosecution, Robin Mayne had approached the Chennai branches of eight banks in 1983 and offered to invest funds of the State Agriculture Department as fixed deposits. He used to travel in cars with State emblem, national flag and beacon light.

After arranging fixed deposits from the Tamil Nadu Agricultural Marketing Board, he used the then Minister’s name to persuade bank managers to lend vehicle loans to some people who, he claimed, were awarded contracts and needed to buy cars, motorcycles and lorries.

Since the fixed deposits were made, the bank officials, some of whom claimed that the then Minister himself spoke to them, agreed to sanction loans.

Robin Mayne and his associates furnished fake documents of vehicles as if they were registered in other States and obtained loans to purchase used vehicles in the names of fictitious persons. Neither the vehicles nor the applicants actually existed. They even managed to open bank accounts in those fictitious names. Some Motor Vehicle Inspectors connived with the suspects.

Soon after withdrawing the loan amount, Robin Mayne closed the fixed deposits in all the banks.

Since the equated monthly instalments were not paid, the bank official conducted an inquiry and realised that the accused had cheated them. They lodged individual complaints and the case was registered by the CBI.

Reading out the judgment, Mr. Venkatasamy said the punishment should just not be customary but instead compensate the loss of public money incurred by the nationalised banks.

11 acquitted

Eleven accused were acquitted since the prosecution could not prove the charges against them beyond reasonable doubt. A few others accused in the case either retired from service or passed away during the course of trial that lasted more than 30 years.

Robin Mayne was convicted and sentenced to seven years Rigorous Imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs. 1.08 crore.

R.D Surya Kumar was sentenced to four years in prison with a fine of Rs. 29.5 lakh. Three others Sahul Hameed, Fazil Sam and Somasundaram were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment and slapped with penalty.

Though the accused were found guilty on various counts, the judge, considering their age and health condition, said that the sentences would run concurrently.

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A case that rattled MGR and fuelled dissent

The Robin Mayne case will be remembered not just for the number of decades the accused managed to escape being punished, but also the political dissent it fuelled within the AIADMK, rattling the then Chief Minister and party founder M G Ramachandran (MGR).

In October 1985, soon after the CBI arrested Robin Mayne, who was an associate of then Agriculture Minister K Kalimuthu, some senior leaders in the AIADMK who did not take kindly to MGR re-appointing Jayalalithaa as the party’s propaganda secretary used Kalimuthu to launch an open attack against her. For the first time, MGR, who miraculously recovered from the death bed a year earlier, faced open dissent with Kalimuthu questioning her appointment.

Kalimuthu went on to accuse Jayalalithaa of conspiring to end the Dravidian rule in Tamil Nadu, and towards this end he claimed that she was instrumental in colluding with the Centre to get the CBI to “falsely implicate” him in the Robin Mayne case.

“A CBI officer who interrogated my personal assistant Manickam told him that the Congress (I) would capture power (in Tamil Nadu) within three months, and Jayalalithaa would become the Chief Minister,” he had charged.

Jayalalithaa countered it saying the charge was the product of Kalimuthu’s “fertile imagination”. Kalimuthu had responded saying Jayalalithaa was keen on fixing him as she found him an obstruction to her political ambitions. To this, Jayalalithaa had said, “I cannot be made a scapegoat for a fraud committed by someone else.”

As the war of words escalated, MGR at a Cabinet meeting held on October 28, 1985, dramatically announced that he was resigning as Chief Minister.

It had the desired effect, with all Ministers not just falling in line but also submitting their resignations to MGR giving him the choice of dropping anyone from the Cabinet.

Curiously, at one stage when Kalimuthu complained to MGR that the CBI was seeking to extract a confession from Robin Mayne (then in the agency’s custody) implicating him, MGR and then Law Minister C Ponnaiyan visited a few police stations “to inspect the conditions in police lock-ups”.

One of the stations they visited was Egmore, where Mayne was reportedly being interrogated by the CBI.

The war between Kalimuthu and Jayalalithaa did not last long. Soon after MGR’s death in December 1987, when the party split, he joined the Jayalalithaa faction and became the party’s deputy general secretary and later MP. But in 1990, he rejoined his parent party, the DMK only to return to the AIADMK fold some years later.

Significantly in 2001, Jayalalithaa got him elected as the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. Not just that in April 2005 a few days after the Supreme Court directed Kalimuthu to face trial in the Robin Mayne case, Jayalalithaa defended him strongly in the Assembly saying there was no need for him to resign.

A year later in November 2006, Kalimuthu died of heart attack following which the charges against him abated.

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Of Bollywood dreams in technicolour

Within the first 10 seconds of Coldplay’s latest video, ‘Hymn for the Weekend’, there are several stereotypes of India: majestic ruins overgrown with weeds, peacocks spreading their tail-feathers and sadhus in saffron robes with ash-smeared foreheads. No wonder the band was trending on social media, and not necessarily for the right reasons.

Since the release of the video on January 29 — which also features Beyoncé as a Bollywood star — they have received both flak and praise for the way they have represented India. They’ve been accused of cultural misrepresentation and appropriation, and applauded for choosing to showcase the beauty of our country. And while my Facebook timeline is flooded with angry rants about how there is more to India than Holi and that we do have malls and skyscrapers and not just slums and villages, I can’t quite agree with the consensus.

Sure, the video has its faults: we don’t walk around throwing colours at everyone all year round, we hardly have mystics floating in the air at every street corner, and we most certainly do not run in slow motion wearing lehengas (or is it a saree?), like Sonam Kapoor does in her blink-and-you-miss-it eight-second cameo. It might have been totally problematic if this was all they showed, with some elephants and snake-charmers thrown into the mix.

In the midst of these clichés, they do showcase the India that is: the bright colours that we love to paint our buildings with, youngsters illegally travelling ‘triples’ on a two-wheeler, the enterprising nature of street artists and vendors, right down to people peering out of windows when there’s a commotion outside and uncles in the background waving at any camera in the vicinity. Bharatanatyam and Kathakali dancers make an appearance, giving a glimpse of South Indian culture as well. The balcony with a charpoy that Chris Martin sits on, in the beginning of the video, is not an unfamiliar sight: anyone who has travelled even to the outskirts of a city would have seen them. The idea of India as an exotic destination isn’t so bad: after all, we do advertise ourselves as ‘Incredible India’.

Yes, Beyoncé is wearing mehendi and stars in a movie called Rani, but there’s nothing disrespectful about it. If the complaint is that she’s supposed to be an Indian, well, what about Amy Jackson,Sunny Leone, Katrina Kaif or Nargis Fakhri playing roles with decidedly Indian names. At the same time, young Indian boys are shown breakdancing, which is clearly adapted from Black/African-American culture. So where does cultural appropriation cross the line from being imitation as a form of flattery and become mockery?

In Coldplay’s case, it shows healthy appreciation for Indian culture, peppered with the idea of India as seen in the Western world. They didn’t get it totally right, but it’s a chance to create conversations and alter people’s perception of the country, one music video at a time.

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Rajan warns against straying from fiscal consolidation path

Ahead of the Budget, Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan on Friday cautioned against deviation from the fiscal consolidation path, which, he said, could hurt macroeconomic stability.

During the global turmoil, macroeconomic stability should not be risked, and both the government and the central bank should continue to bring down inflation, Dr. Rajan said.

The growth multipliers on government spending at this juncture are likely to be much smaller, so more spending will probably hurt debt dynamics.

“Put differently, it is worth asking if there really are very high- return investments that we are foregoing by staying on the consolidation path?”

“As Brazil’s experience suggests, the enormous costs of becoming an unstable country far outweigh any small growth benefits that can be obtained through aggressive policies… We should be very careful about jeopardising our single most important strength during this period of global turmoil – macroeconomic stability.”

Taking the fiscal deficits of the Centre and states, the consolidated fiscal deficit for the country rose last year to 7.2 per cent from 7 per cent. “So we actually expanded the aggregate deficit in the last calendar year.”

Originally, the target was to bring down fiscal deficit to 3.6 per cent of the GDP in 2015-16 but it has been postponed by a year. Now, government is targeting 3.9 per cent in the current fiscal. Deviation from the fiscal consolidation path could push up government bond yields, both because of the greater volume of bonds to be financed and potential loss of government credibility on future consolidation, Dr. Rajan said while delivering the CD Deshmukh Memorial lecture.

A slowing in inflation has been on account of the “joint work” of the government and the RBI, aided to some extent by the fall in international commodity prices, he said. “This is no mean achievement given two successive droughts that would have, in the past, pushed inflation into double digits.”

Dr. Rajan said that it was unfortunate that despite the success on the inflation front there are voices suggesting weakening the fight against inflation.

Inflation framework

“Let me therefore reiterate that we have absolutely no intent of departing from the inflation framework that has been agreed with the government. We look forward to the government amending the RBI Act to usher in the monetary policy committee, further strengthening the framework.”

With the government’s UDAY scheme to revive state power distribution companies set to become operational in the next fiscal it is unlikely that states will be shrinking their deficits, he said..

This will put pressure on the Centre to adjust more, Dr. Rajan said. The NDA government had last year put a pause on the fiscal consolidation path, postponing reduction in fiscal deficit target by a year.

He stressed that macroeconomic stability relies immensely on policy credibility, which is the public belief that policy will depart from the charted course only under extreme necessity, and not because of convenience. “If every time there is any minor difficulty, we change the goal posts, we signal to the markets that we have no staying power,” Dr. Rajan said.

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Three get death for Kamduni gangrape and murder

Three convicts of the sensational Kamduni gangrape and murder of a 21—year—old college student over two years back were today sentenced to death by a city court while three others got life imprisonment.

Additional Sessions Judge Sanchita Sarkar handed out capital sentence to Aminul Ali, Saiful Ali and Ansar Ali, while Imanul Islam, Aminul Islam and Bhola Naskar were sentenced to life imprisonment for the gangrape and brutal murder of the woman on June 7, 2013.

Rejecting arguments for not giving death sentence to the three, who were found guilty of gangrape and murder, by their lawyers claiming it could not be termed as the rarest of rare crime, the judge pronounced the sentences at 3.40 pm.

The judge called out the names of each of the convicts, who were produced in the packed court room, before pronouncing the sentences.

Saiful Ali, Ansar Ali and Aminul Ali were found guilty under sections 376(d) (gangrape), 302 (murder), 376A (inflicting injury which causes death of a woman) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC.

The judge found the other three guilty under sections 376(d) (gangrape), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of IPC.

Two accused — Rafiqul Islam and Nur Ali were acquitted on Thursday owing to lack of evidence against them. Another accused Gopal Naskar died during trial in August last year.

The gangrape and murder of the girl took place when she was returning home at Kamduni, about 50 km from Kolkata, in North 24—Parganas district after appearing for an examination at her college on June 7, 2013.

The second year BA student was pulled into a farm when she was walking back home along a deserted road after alighting from a bus. She was subsequently gangraped and murdered.

Her mutilated body was found the next morning in a corner of the farm.

The incident had sparked widespread outrage in the state amidst serious concerns over women’s safety.

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Angelique Kerber stuns Serena Williams to win Australian Open

Angelique Kerber became the first German to win a Grand Slam title since her childhood idol Steffi Graf in 1999 when she upset world number one Serena Williams 6-4 3-6 6-4 to clinch the Australian Open on Saturday.

The 34-year-old American had been seeking her seventh Melbourne Park title and 22nd overall, which would have moved her into a tie with Graf for the most Grand Slam singles titles in the Open era.

The seventh-seeded Kerber, however, was not overawed by the occasion of her first Grand Slam final, breaking twice in the first set to take it in 39 minutes as Williams made 23 unforced errors.

Williams cut down on the errors to send it into a third, which Kerber, who had the opportunity to serve it out while leading 5-3 only for the American to battle back, clinched when Williams hit a volley long in the following game.

The opening salvo had looked ominous as Williams raced through the first game to love and then put pressure on the German, who was down 15-30 after a double fault but managed to suppress any demons she may have had and held on.

The 28-year-old German then played superb defensive tennis against the powerful Williams, scrambling to force her to play an extra shot that ultimately contributed to 23 unforced errors from the American in the first set.

Those errors and a lack of timing on several potential winners enabled the German to break again in the seventh game and then seal the first set in 39 minutes when Williams made another unforced error.

The pair held serve in the opening two games of the second set before Williams began to get her timing back and made less errors as she raced out to a 4-1 lead, though the concerned look she shot her supporters in the players' box suggested she had been battling to work the German out.

Williams sent the match into a decider when Kerber hit an easy forehand into the net to clinch the second set.

Both players suffered early breaks in the third set but the championship appeared to have tipped in the German's favour in a marathon sixth game when she finally converted her fifth break point to take a 4-2 lead.

She extended that to 5-2 and was serving for the title at 5-3 before Williams fought back, though the inspired German was able to clinch her first Grand Slam and then collapse onto the court in jubilation.

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More than a numbers game: moving beyond the floor test

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar believed that Article 356 of the Constitution, which provides for imposition of President’s rule in the States and dissolution of State Assemblies, would, in reality, be only a ‘dead letter’. However, by the time a Constitution Bench ruled in the S.R. Bommai v. Union of India case (1994) that a presidential proclamation under Article 356 is subject to judicial review, that it is not an absolute but a conditional power, and that no Assembly can be dissolved before both Houses of Parliament ratify the proclamation, the provision originally meant to be used sparingly had been invoked over 90 times. After the verdict, however, one would have thought that the provision has been somewhat neutralised. That the casual resort to imposition of President’s rule or dissolution of State Assemblies at the whim of the ruling party at the Centre has ended and the potential for further misuse removed. Arunachal Pradesh has now demonstrated that the ‘dead letter’ is quite alive and kicking Chief Ministers out of power.

Many grounds have been cited in support of bringing the sensitive border State under Central rule: from “breakdown of the constitutional machinery” to “collapse of law and order” to other sinister charges such as a threat to the life and security of the Governor and alleged links between the Chief Minister and an extremist group. The context, of course, is something that the Congress is familiar with, as it had used similar circumstances to topple many a regime in the past: dissidence within the ruling party and the Opposition colluding with the rebels to bring down the regime. In Arunachal Pradesh, the party is at the receiving end. It had 47 MLAs in a 60-member House, and the BJP 11, and yet its Chief Minister has been deposed by dissidents acting in concert with the Opposition and helped by the Governor.

Spotlight on the Governor

The manner in which Arunachal Pradesh was brought under President’s rule highlights a significant strand of political behaviour in the country. Even constitutional authorities believe less in law and propriety than in their ability to work around them to achieve their desired results. And one is not merely talking about Governor J.P. Rajkhowa while saying this. It is equally applicable to the deposed Chief Minister, Nabam Tuki. It is quite obvious that the Governor was more concerned about removing the Speaker and installing a rival faction leader as Chief Minister than giving an opportunity to Mr. Tuki to demonstrate his majority on the floor of the House. As for Mr. Tuki, he appears to have done nothing to ascertain his support within the Congress legislature party in the face of brewing dissidence within its ranks. Nor did he convene the Assembly until it became a constitutional necessity as it was nearly six months since the House had last met.

The Gauhati High Court has categorically ruled in favour of the Governor’s decisions in the present crisis. It has upheld his power to summon or prorogue the Assembly under Article 174(1) and his power to send messages, even fixing a specific item on the agenda of the legislature, under Article 175(2). The court saw nothing wrong in the Governor advancing a sitting of the House from January 14, 2016 to December 16, 2015. Nor did it find anything illegal in his specifying that a motion to remove the Speaker should be taken up immediately after the House convenes. In effect, a controversial ‘sitting’ of 33 members of the Assembly in a makeshift venue has been upheld by the high court. It is somewhat ironical that at a time when even a presidential proclamation is subject to judicial review, case law on the role of the Governor still favours gubernatorial privilege and discretion.

A crucial question before the Supreme Court is whether the Governor can, in his discretion and without the aid and advice of the Council of Ministers, summon the legislature or advance a scheduled sitting; and whether he can fix the agenda for such a session on his own. Interestingly, the Gauhati High Court extensively quotes from a Madras High Court Full Bench verdict of 1973 favouring the Governor’s action in somewhat similar circumstances in the Tamil Nadu Assembly. There, too, the ruling party had split, the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker were in different factions, and the dissidents wanted to remove the Chief Minister through a censure motion. However, in the Tamil Nadu precedent — where also there was a parallel ‘Assembly session’ — the Governor was acting on the advice of the ministry of M. Karunanidhi while sending a message to the House that it should first take up a motion to remove the Speaker, whose loyalty lay with the dissidents. On the crucial question of the Governor’s discretion, the high courts have gone by the principle in Article 163: that the question whether any advice, and if so what advice, had been given to the Governor shall not be gone into by any court; and when a question arises whether the matter on which the Governor had acted was actually one on which he can use his discretion, the decision made by the Governor in his discretion will be final.

Options ahead of the floor test

The validity of President’s rule in Arunachal Pradesh will be decided on established constitutional principles, but the time may have come to go beyond even the floor test requirement in ascertaining whether a particular regime commands a majority. Just as unscrupulous defections are legally discouraged, opportunistic cooperation between ruling party dissidents and Opposition legislators just to bring down a Chief Minister may also have to be prevented. This can be achieved if the Governor asks the Chief Minister to submit proof of his support within his own legislature party or alliance partners before ordering a floor test. In the event of some factions withdrawing their support to the government, the Governor can always turn them away and ask them to move a no-confidence motion instead of coming to him. If there is any attempt by the Speaker or the Chief Minister to block such a motion, or if the Assembly is not convened, the Governor should not hesitate to write to the party’s leadership seeking proof of its legislature party still having only one leader. This may force the hand of parties that seek to avoid convening legislature party meetings and hoping that in the Assembly, a floor test can be managed by a partisan Speaker and by selective expulsions to change the composition of the House. In other words, those arguing for the primacy of the floor test will need to have their house in order before the matter is decided in the legislature.

An incumbent government’s reluctance to follow this process may lead to the Governor recommending that the Centre give a suitable direction to the State. For, under Article 365, it shall be lawful for the President to then hold that because of any non-compliance with the direction, the State can no more be run in accordance with the Constitution. This sequence — proof of subsisting support within the ruling party, a floor test, and in the event of these efforts being blocked, a formal direction from the Union, followed by a determination on the constitutionality of the continuance of the regime — may address concerns of partisan behaviour.

Even in times when the incumbent regime swears by “co-operative federalism”, Raj Bhavans are seen as sinecures for friends of the ruling party and its formerly active members and associates. New norms will have to guide both the appointment of Governors and their functioning. The recommendations of the Sarkaria Commission on Centre-State relations are readily available with regard to choosing the occupants of Raj Bhavan.

It had said a Governor should be someone eminent in some walk of life, and should not be one “who has taken too great a part in politics generally, and particularly in the recent past”. Only a few eminent personalities outside the domain of politics and civil or military service have been made Governors. As long as parties pursue their own political interests rather than abide by the Constitution, it will be left to the courts to uphold federal norms.

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