DELHI chief minister Sheila Diksh*t and the Capital's lieutenant governor Tejender Khanna have a lot of explaining to do on the parole being given to Manu Sharma, the millionaire brat convicted of killing model Jessica Lal in 1999.
The parole to Mr Sharma was given on two grounds — one so that he could take care of his ailing mother and two, that he could support the flagging family business.
Both have turned out to be flimsy, if not fictitious. His ' ailing' mother, Shakti Rani Sharma, was busy addressing a Women's Cricket Association of India press conference at her family- owned Piccadilly Hotel in Chandigarh last Saturday.
Considering that his father, Venod Sharma, a prominent Congress politician from Haryana with extensive business interests, campaigned extensively during the recent state assembly elections, there are no reasons to believe that the family business needed the services of a convicted murderer. The junior Mr Sharma also has a brother who otherwise runs the business.
Clearly, then, the parole seems to be politically motivated, having little or no legal merit. The police also seem to have played a sinister role in an episode when the paroled Manu Sharma allegedly visited a nightclub in the Capital. Frequenting a nightclub is not an offence even if you are on parole. So why did 50- plus policemen reach the nightclub to allegedly apprehend Mr Sharma? The CCTV footage was also confiscated claiming that there was a brawl in the nightclub, something that the owners and eyewitnesses deny. Why? But that is not the only unanswered question that arises out of this murky affair: Was there any due diligence done on the claims made by Manu Sharma in his parole application? Because, he was clearly lying about his mother's ailment.
Also, does the law allow a convicted killer to be set free for two months while serving his sentence? Mrs Diksh*t defended her decision on Monday, saying " all the rules were followed" in approving the parole application.
Ms Diksh*t and Mr Khanna are supposed to protect the people from the likes of Mr Sharma. Instead, they let him loose on a flimsy pretext. The state was supposed to protect Jessica; it did not. After her death, it should have protected her interests by ensuring her killer pays for his crime. Instead the Chief Minister and the Lieutenant Governor have betrayed an innocent person who was cut down at the prime of her life.
Metro failure
SUNDAY's chaos on the Delhi Metro reinforces the perception that the capital's only world class institution is slipping on the standards it had set for itself at the time of its inception. It is difficult to resist concluding that the chain of events set into motion after a newly acquired train came to a halt in the underground portion of the Rajiv Chowk- Dwarka line could have been handled a lot better. First, the lights and airconditioners in the train should not have gone off after it came to a halt. Surely, the Metro trains are expected to have a power back- up for such purposes.
It won't do for the Metro authorities to say that the rescue efforts initiated by them were hampered because people broke open the doors and jumped into the underground tunnel. When train compartments that are packed with close to a 1000 people are submerged in suffocating pitch darkness inside a tunnel and the crying and shrieking takes over, it is not easy for passengers to keep a stiff upper lip. It is for the Metro authorities to have a concrete contingency plan in place for such situations.
The rescue efforts initiated by the Metro authorities and the near- stampede like situation that prevailed at Rajiv Chowk suggest that this was not the case. The rescue train that was sent after the stranded train took too long in coming.
It had not anticipated the scenario at the site, with the result that most of the stranded passengers walked their way in the underground tunnel to Rajiv Chowk.
The Metro provides us clean and swift urban transportation service, for which we are grateful. But the managers of the system must plan for all eventualities. Their emergency drill should be known to their passengers and, ideally, drilled occasionally.
