January 27th, 2008 
krishna Organised crime is not unique to India. In the advanced West also, where huge profits are available in the flesh trade, drug peddling, money laundering and arms and human trafficking, thousands are organised in criminal syndicates ready to kill or maim for profit. However, the extent to which hardened criminals have found entry in our legislatures, ministries and big businesses of late and accumulated power, prestige and apparent immunity from the rule of law in populous states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh is a matter of immense concern for the whole nation. According to the Intelligence Bureau‘s latest estimate, nearly one-fourth of MPs and MLAs from the two states have heinous criminal cases registered against them. In this context, the introduction of the Uttar Pradesh Control of Organised Crime Act (UPCOCA) by the Mayawati government to counter the menace of a well-entrenched mafia should have been widely welcomed. Yet, the cancer of criminalisation has spread so far today that any reckless surgery also threatens to aggravate it further now. The opposition to the wide ranging powers bestowed by the above legislation on police and magistrates has thus emanated from all political parties in Uttar Pradesh barring the ruling BSP. The criminal-politician conundrum in our society needs to be examined very closely in this complicated scenario. The N.N. Vohra Committee, appointed in the wake of the 1993 bomb blasts, had observed that in several parts of the country “the mafia is virtually running a parallel government, pushing the state apparatus into irrelevance — criminal gangs and armed senas have developed extensive contacts with bureaucrats, politicians, media persons – (and) even the members of the judicial system”. A decade after the publication of this report, even this alarming portrayal appears rather dated as the virus of criminalisation seems to be crippling not only the polity today but also the civil society as a whole. The Deol Committee Report submitted by the Intelligence Bureau to the Prime Minister’s Office spells out the same in some detail. Till the early sixties, for example, criminals could hardly dare to stand in elections. However, today, in some states, they have graduated from aiding politicians to controlling them. Honest officers are transferred, promoted and sometimes murdered at their instance. Their henchmen can run kidnapping and extortion rackets even from jails while agents from enemy states use them for unleashing terror, riots and separatism at [...]
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