delhi. Swaraj India welcomes the sentencing of “Ram Rahim” Gurmeet Singh to 10 years of rigorous imprisonment for raping two sadhvis in his ashram. Hopefully, this brings to an end a long saga in which our criminal justice system nearly failed itself. We salute the judge of the CBI court who withstood all kinds of pressure to bring this high profile rapist to book. We also hope that this would not mean a shift of public attention away from the issue of women’s exploitation by men in power. This should also not mean end of scrutiny for some of our public institutions and functionaries who have come off in very poor light in the last one week or so.
The state of Haryana has witnessed an unprecedented breakdown of rule of law. The chain of events in the days leading up to and subsequent to the conviction of Gurmeet Ram Rahim have exposed the political complicity of the ruling party, callousness of the government and hypocrisy of the entire political establishment. Prime Minister Narendra Modi must bear the responsibility for continuing to foist a Chief Minister on Haryana that no one voted for, no one saw doing anything during a crisis and no one approves of. The only organ of the state that has redeemed itself in defense of constitutional order is the judiciary.
Third time in three years, the Haryana government was paralyzed in the face of serious challenge to law and order. This time it was not just administrative inaptitude (as in confrontation with Baba Rampal sect in Hisar in 2015) or political procrastination (as in state-wide violence during Jat reservation stir in 2016), but active political collusion from the highest quarters. Khattar government had no business to continue in power after the Prakash Singh report had exposed the break-down of state government during Jat agitation. Shri Narendra Modi’s personal support for Shri Khattar pushed the state into this third crisis. What makes it worse is that violence was allowed to take place despite foreknowledge of the time, venue and nature of expected violence by Dera supporters. Over the last week or so, many questions regarding the violence leading to the death of 38 persons have gone unanswered.
