Exposing the shameless somersault on the POTA issue by The Hindu editorialist
by Sachi Sri Kantha, August 10, 2004
Why does the Hindu newspaper establishment of Chennai spew venom on Eelam Tamil nationalism since 1983? How about the following answers? (1) By tradition, The Hindu is conservative, and places India’s interests in its head; [which means, they think supporting separatism in a neighboring country creates separatist tendencies among various Indian tribes.] (2) Being owned by the Tamil-speaking brahmins, in spirit, The Hindu cannot offend Sanskrit and thus by deduction has to profess an anti-Tamil stance; (3) It is good business to attack the LTTE and Pirabhakaran relentlessly and thereby please the Sinhalese, and wield some power in peddling back-door diplomacy; (4) Subscribing to the motto: ‘To hell with Tamil society; nothing is important for success in business other than selfishness and practising weather-vane politics’; (5) All of the above.
While checking the past editorials published in The Hindu newspaper on the LTTE-relevant theme, I came across six humorous editorials. These six editorials, which appeared between July 6, 2002 and May 10, 2004, relating to implementation of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), are clear proof that answer number 4 cited above is closest to the truth. One has to read the complete texts of the six editorials to believe the irony. Editorials 1, 2 and 3 were written with bile on LTTE and Pirabhakaran and were pro-POTA. These were captioned as follows:
A necessary determination [The Hindu, July 6, 2002]; Signal against terror [The Hindu, July 13, 2002]; Selective use of POTA [The Hindu, April 1, 2003]
However, editorials 4, 5 and 6 were shameless somersaults from the pro-POTA stance, and The Hindu editorialist fumed with an anti-POTA stance. These were captioned as follows:
POTA reinterpreted [The Hindu, December 18, 2003]; Withdraw the Cases [The Hindu, April 10, 2004]; VAIKO’s Saga [The Hindu, May 10, 2004]
The central theme in the enacted POTA drama of mid 2002 was Tamil Nadu politician Vaiko’s [V.Gopalswamy, the leader of the MDMK] verbal offering of support to the LTTE and Pirabhakaran, which ruffled the feathers of his opponent, Jayalalitha, the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister. The Hindu editorialist initially endorsed the action of Jayalalitha whole-heartedly by stating, “Given the brazenness with which Mr. Vaiko has flaunted his support for the banned terrorist organisation, the LTTE, and has expressed his readiness to face any law, however stringent, on that account, the Tamil Nadu Government has no real choice but to act firmly against such dangerous defiance. In fact, the track record of Mr. Vaiko right from his days in the DMK has always had a strong and rather fanatically pro-LTTE streak, with its chief, Velupillai Prabakaran, being glorified as an unparalleled leader.” [The Hindu editorial of July 6, 2002]
Nearly 22 months later,the same Hindu’s editorialist somersaulted into an anti-POTA agitator and concluded “The Vaiko case is a shocking illustration of how the `rule of law’ has been — and can continue to be — misused to settle political scores in `Shining India’. It is emblematic of the inherent danger and mischief of POTA and a compelling argument for sending it to the dustbin of history.” [The Hindu, May 10, 2004]
Reason for N.Ram’s somersault on POTA
Why this somersault in 22 months? Not that The Hindu establishment became a fan of Vaiko’s politics or felt good about his verbal support to the LTTE. The somersault was only because the ever-unpredictable Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalitha turned into a wolf and tried to bite The Hindu establishment with those same POTA teeth in late 2003. When Jeyalalitha turned against The Hindu establishment, N.Ram [the current chief editor of The Hindu newspaper] converted himself into an anti-POTA activist. He let the cat out of his bag in his interview to Shoba Warrier of Rediff.Com. on November 19, 2003 [source: www.rediff.com site]. Here are the excerpts:
Warrier: ‘Did you have an inkling, even before the Tamil Nadu police descended on The Hindu office, of the things to come? I ask this question because all the journalists wanted by the police had disappeared by then.’
Ram: In the morning, a friend heard from an inside source that the (Tamil Nadu assembly) privileges committee was to recommend some punishment. Then, the source said, (state chief minister) Jayalalithaa would intervene and magnanimously say, since I am involved, there is no need to go further. This was what we expected. Half of what we heard happened. The committee recommended seven days simple imprisonment, and Jayalalitha intervened, as expected, and said it was not needed as she was involved. So, the information was true. What came as a surprise was the other part which was on the editorial. The committee recommended 14 days imprisonment, and she kept quiet which means, go ahead. It was cunningly planned for a weekend. We had to take care of the liberty of our people.’
Warrier: ‘Why did you decide to hide them? Why didn’t they come out in the open and face the police?’
Ram: ‘Nobody decided to hide them. We saw it as unconstitutional and illegal. Otherwise, tomorrow, a legislature may say sentence somebody to death or whip him or cut his hands off like in Saudi Arabia, do you expect me to say, go and face it? There is nothing that prevents them from saying so. It is only a question of degree. We don’t know how they will treat (executive editor) Malini (Parthasarthy). Rumours were they would rough her up. My uncle (publisher S) Rangarajan is 67 and has had two angioplasty surgeries.
If you say no court can look into it, what will happen tomorrow? The whole Constitution goes for a six. We argued in court, in fact, what is to prevent the speaker of the legislative assembly finding somebody guilty and sentencing (the person) to death and immediately ordering execution through a warrant by the speaker? What is to prevent it? You can say, right to life. The same thing is involved here. We don’t know what they will do. Who knows whether Rangarajan would survive the way the police behaved in Bangalore.’
Warrier: ‘You don’t have much trust in the state government machinery and the police?’
Ram: ‘To put it mildly, yes. The answer is, yes.’
Warrier: ‘Are you outraged by the behaviour of the police, or do you feel sympathy towards the police who had to execute such orders?’
Ram: ‘I have no sympathy for the police…”
By Golly! Ram has no sympathy for the Tamil Nadu police, and Ram has no trust in the [Tamil Nadu] state government machinery and the police. The answers are falling from the horse’s mouth. The same horse was the one which has been neighing about the authenticity of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination trial conducted in Tamil Nadu in the 1990s, and shouting from the rooftop that Pirabhakaran is a “prime accused in the Rajiv Gandhi murder case.” [see below, editorials 1 and 2] Can any sane person expect some consistency from this loud mouth, Narasimhan Ram? If Ram – a patriotic Indian citizen, to boot – himself doesn’t trust the Tamil Nadu police, how could one expect the LTTE leader Pirabhakaran – a non-citizen of India – to trust the same Tamil Nadu police?
What is further irritating is the fact that in both anti-POTA editorials published in April 10, 2004 and May 10, 2004, The Hindu didn’t apologize to its readers for its erroneous, gung-ho, pro-POTO stance presented in July 6, 2002 and July 13, 2002. But, isn’t it too much to expect apology from the scums of selfish journalism? For the record, I provide the six editorials in chronological order.
Editorial 1: A necessary determination [The Hindu, July 6, 2002]
The current police crackdown on pro-LTTE elements in Tamil Nadu, the highpoint of which is the registering of a criminal case under the Prevention Of Terrorism Act against the MDMK’s supremo, Vaiko, reflects a commendable alacrity and determination on the part of the Jayalalithaa regime to go all out in rooting out such extremist subversive forces from the State. It was at Ms. Jayalalithaa’s instance that the Centre recently clamped a ban under POTA on two homegrown Tamil chauvinist outfits — the Tamil Nadu Liberation Army (TNLA) and the Tamil Nadu Retrieval Troops (TNRT). Given the brazenness with which Mr. Vaiko has flaunted his support for the banned terrorist organisation, the LTTE, and has expressed his readiness to face any law, however stringent, on that account, the Tamil Nadu Government has no real choice but to act firmly against such dangerous defiance. In fact, the track record of Mr. Vaiko right from his days in the DMK has always had a strong and rather fanatically pro-LTTE streak, with its chief, Velupillai Prabakaran, being glorified as an unparalleled leader. This is something neither he nor his MDMK has ever tried to conceal even after the `Tigers’ had perpetrated the treacherous and most heinous act on Indian soil of assassinating Rajiv Gandhi, India’s former Prime Minister.
Critics of this move against Mr. Vaiko have alleged a partisan motive in applying to his case the special law that contains some admittedly stringent provisions. Certainly, there have been some genuine apprehensions and serious reservations about POTA and its enforcement. Most of them have stemmed from the experience of the infamous TADA; its draconian provisions were directed singularly against the minority communities. In a way, the record of the Vajpayee regime in invoking POTA so far has been hardly reassuring or likely to remove misgivings on this score, given its palpable reluctance to move against communal outfits of the majoritarian persuasion that have indulged in blatantly disruptive and violent activity. The LTTE is an unabashed practitioner of political terrorism of the most treacherous variety in the name of `ideology’ and its subversive potential vis-a-vis India has showed up in the brutal murder of Rajiv Gandhi and its continuing threat of destabilising India’s security. As such, the rationale for invoking POTA against the LTTE and its backers and campaigners is not difficult to appreciate. If ever there was a case for the invoking of POTA, there can be little doubt that the present case must surely be the one. It must be said to Ms. Jayalalithaa’s credit that she has been unequivocal and forthright in her condemnation of the LTTE post-Rajiv Gandhi assassination. Her unambiguousness on this score reflected in her getting the State Assembly to pass a resolution urging the Centre to seek the extradition of Mr. Prabakaran, the prime accused in the Rajiv Gandhi murder case.
What remains a major cause for worry is the Vajpayee regime’s strikingly non-serious approach to the matter of containing the LTTE. For a start, of course, there is its ambivalence about applying real pressure on Sri Lanka to extradite Mr. Prabakaran to face trial here, which is in contrast to its doggedness in pursuing its demands of Pakistan for the handing over of 20 terrorists wanted in criminal cases. Now, with the Tamil Nadu Government’s determination to move against the pro-LTTE elements, the ruling National Democratic Alliance’s reluctance to endorse this approach will reveal its double standards in its professed battle against terrorism. The prevarication of the Vajpayee regime of course has much to do with the fact that pro-LTTE parties such as the MDMK are part of the NDA. That such a patently anomalous partnership has prevailed for so long can be explained only in terms of the crass opportunism that has been the defining `principle’ of the NDA from the very beginning. It is time the ruling coalition condemns such attempts to glorify terrorist organisations such as the LTTE. An unambiguous message must go out to the supporters and promoters of the LTTE in Tamil Nadu. The least that is expected of the Vajpayee regime is not to do anything that would scuttle or derail the Jayalalithaa administration’s spirited effort towards that objective.
Editorial 2: Signal against terror [The Hindu, July 13, 2002]
The arrest of the MDMK chief, Vaiko, under the newly-enacted Prevention of Terrorism Act for his manifestly defiant and provocative pro-LTTE speeches has shown that the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, meant business when she wrote to the Prime Minister about her Government’s intention, after clearly spelling out the rationale for moving against him. The buildup to Mr. Vaiko’s arrest and the manner in which it was effected, as he landed at the Chennai airport after a trip abroad, presented a striking contrast to the way a similar task was executed against the DMK chief and former Chief Minister, M. Karunanidhi, just over a year ago; it was a nocturnal operation carried out in an obnoxiously crude and unconscionably intrusive manner. In Mr. Vaiko’s case, the action has been extraordinarily transparent and procedurally meticulous. No Chief Minister is obliged to tell the Prime Minister about an intended legal action in what lies in the State Government’s exclusive constitutional domain. Not only did Ms. Jayalalithaa resort to this unusual, and presumably well considered course but ensured that everything — the proposed action under POTA, the grounds for it and so on — became public knowledge by publicising her letter to Atal Behari Vajpayee. Whatever the reason, the fact remained that this time around, the action taken by the Jayalalithaa administration is virtually free from the sort of infirmities that rendered it vulnerable to Central intervention on the earlier occasion.
As for the invoking of POTA, there can be little doubt that the tone and substance of Mr. Vaiko’s speech in question (the one made at a public meeting to mark his party’s anniversary) does attract the special anti-terror law’s provisions. In fact, Mr. Vaiko has been an inveterate supporter of the LTTE — not just the cause of the Sri Lankan Tamils’ struggle for `nationhood’— long before he broke away from the DMK to start his own outfit, MDMK. Neither he nor his organisation has ever fought shy of proclaiming their hero-worship of the LTTE’s terrorist chief, Velupillai Prabakaran, the main accused in the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, India’s former Prime Minister. If the LTTE remains outlawed since its involvement in Rajiv Gandhi’s murder (first under the erstwhile TADA, now under POTA), it is because the outfit continues to be a serious threat to India’s stability and security. Given this context, there can be absolutely no question of allowing anyone to indulge in anything that seeks to support or promote the LTTE’s cause or project its image. It is imperative that powerful and unambiguous signals from both the State Government and the Centre go out to the backers and campaigners of the LTTE that the law of the land would be invoked unsparingly — and this goes as well for the various Tamil chauvinist and subnationalist groups operating in Tamil Nadu. In this sense, the spirit behind the State Government’s determined action against Mr. Vaiko (along with some of his party men) and a couple of Tamil extremist outfits should be sustained and carried forward so that the rest of the breed of subversives are also brought to book.
In the wake of Mr. Vaiko’s arrest under POTA — something the ruling coalition did not perhaps bargain for when it pushed the law through Parliament despite genuine reservations about some of its provisions — the Vajpayee regime can no longer maintain its hollow pretensions that it is determined to root out terrorism of all hues and, at the same time, continue to have proclaimed LTTE-backers (such as the MDMK and the PMK) as partners in the ruling establishment. As long as the National Democratic Alliance has on board these outfits, the impression that when the BJP-headed coalition regime talks of fighting terrorism it means only `Islamic terrorism’ is bound to be reinforced. Indeed, the track record of the Government so far does lend credence to such a construction.
Editorial 3: Selective use of POTA [The Hindu, April 1, 2003]
By first submitting to the Supreme Court that the MDMK general secretary, Vaiko, attracted the provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and then offering to file a fresh, corrective, affidavit on the issue after coming under pressure from allies, the National Democratic Alliance Government is guilty of endorsing selective use of the anti-terrorism law. The distinction sought to be made by the Centre between the “use” and the “misuse” of POTA appears to be driven by political expediency and not any legal argument. Apparently, the difficulty for the BJP, which heads the NDA, is to help the leader of an allied party, Mr. Vaiko, out of the case slapped on him by the Tamil Nadu Government for supporting the banned Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, without, however, diluting the provisions of the POTA. In short, the Centre, while maintaining the need for a draconian law such as POTA to deal with cross-border terrorism, does not want the same to be used by State Governments, whether in Tamil Nadu or Uttar Pradesh, against political opponents. Especially if these political opponents are friends of the BJP. Although there is no denying that some of the provisions of POTA are harsh, what is disconcerting is that the Centre, which rode roughshod over Opposition criticism of the Act, seems to have woken up to the danger of misuse of the legislation only after the BJP’s political friends were put in the dock.
Even before the faux pas in the Government affidavit in the Supreme Court, which the Attorney-General, Soli Sorabjee, attributed to juniors, the Centre had decided to constitute a review committee to check misuse of POTA. The Deputy Prime Minister, L.K. Advani, had stated that the review committee would ensure that the law would not be used against ordinary criminals or persons who were not terrorists. In the eyes of the BJP, the cases of Mr. Vaiko, and the independent Uttar Pradesh MLA, Raja Bhaiya, did not warrant the use of POTA. But, irrespective of the political motives of the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, or the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mayawati, in putting their electoral rivals behind bars, the fact remains that they have gone by the book in invoking POTA and more justifiably in the case of the manifest support for the LTTE. Truly, it is impossible for the Centre to ensure that the law is used only for the reasons originally envisaged: cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir and destabilisation plans of Pakistan’s ISI. Ironically, while the Jammu and Kashmir Government is not implementing POTA, other State Governments have become alive to the possibility of using POTA to deal with law and order problems and political rivals.
In Tamil Nadu, the Centre’s attitude on POTA is irrevocably tied to the BJP’s choice of allies. Any support of the State Government’s use of the anti-terrorism law against Mr. Vaiko would have effectively ended the alliance with the DMK and the MDMK. The DMK president, M. Karunanidhi, has actually called for the repeal of the law, going a step further than even the MDMK which, being a junior ally in the NDA, has to be necessarily more circumspect before taking on the BJP. As the next general election is at least a year away, the BJP, for its part, would not like to displease the DMK when any tie-up with the AIADMK is yet to be formalised. The AIADMK and the BJP have moved closer to each other in the last one year, but it is still too early to talk of a political realignment. Indeed, the options-open policy of the BJP in Tamil Nadu seems to have resulted in the Centre’s ambivalence on the Vaiko issue. If there is a point to be made against the political use of POTA by the State Government, then it holds true for the Centre too. Support or opposition from the Centre to particular cases of use of POTA is seemingly dictated by the political situation in a State. Without doubt, the Centre’s plea against the misuse of POTA lacks credibility.
Editorial 4: POTA reinterpreted [The Hindu, December 18, 2003]
While upholding the constitutional validity of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), the Supreme Court has sanitised what is easily the most contentious and loosely worded Section in this controversial piece of legislation. In doing so, the Court has tempered the disappointment that might have arisen out of its disinclination to review the provisions of this draconian law in a more comprehensive manner. It has been clear for some time now that Section 21 of POTA, which deals with offences relating to the support given to terrorist organisations, is cast in a manner that virtually invites gross abuse. On a plain reading, the Section makes no distinction between mere expressions of sympathy or verbal support for terrorist organisations and acting with the intent of inviting support for them or their activities. It was the failure to make this vital distinction that provided the Tamil Nadu Government the legal handle to book MDMK leader Vaiko under POTA for statements made in favour of the LTTE. For a while, Union Minister M. Kannappan was threatened with a similar fate after certain statements he made were interpreted as being “pro-LTTE”.
The credit for arguing, and repeatedly, that Section 21 must be attracted only in cases where there is a criminal intention to further or encourage terrorist activity must go squarely to Attorney General Soli Sorabjee. The Supreme Court has essentially concurred with Mr. Sorabjee’s interpretation of Section 21, thus building in a safeguard that will go a long way towards preventing the kind of political misuse POTA was put to in Mr. Vaiko’s case. It is true that the Supreme Court rejected Mr. Vaiko’s contentions in his writ petition and steered clear of expressing any view on the facts connected to his case. However, the judgment is still something of a victory for the MDMK leader. The Court’s strict construal of Section 21 has, in effect, knocked the legal bottom out of the Tamil Nadu Government’s case against Mr. Vaiko — one in which the evidence against him is entirely based on certain “pro-LTTE statements” he is said to have made. Moreover, the Court upheld the contention that under POTA, those detained for over one year may avail themselves of the bail provisions under ordinary law.
Mr. Vaiko, who has been in detention for 17 months, did not choose to seek bail on a matter of principle. But he must fancy his chances of an early release from jail given the POTA trial court’s likely reassessment of the case in the light of the Supreme Court’s judgment. The Central Review Committee, which has been constituted to examine and review specific cases of the misuse of POTA, is also seized of his case. The Committee’s recommendations are now binding on State Governments, a power it acquired from last month’s ordinance, which was passed in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday as the POTA Amendment Bill. That the Centre has been forced to empower a non-judicial committee to review the application of specific cases booked under POTA is a clear admission that the legislation is flawed and has been prone to wanton misuse. Even if one ignores the larger legal issues related to granting this Committee the power to review ongoing criminal cases, the very setting up of such a mechanism constitutes a powerful indictment of POTA. The Supreme Court’s task was to consider the constitutionality of this extraordinary legislation and not, as it observed, to examine whether the country really needs it. And here lies the rub. The Court’s upholding of POTA does nothing to detract from the argument that — for reasons moral, political and commonsensical — POTA must go.
Editorial 5: Withdraw the Cases [The Hindu, April 10, 2004]
There was always only one rational conclusion with respect to the flagrantly unjust and politically motivated cases slapped on Vaiko, the general secretary of the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, and eight other partymen under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Thankfully, the Central POTA Review Committee, which was recently given the legal teeth to check the misuse of the draconian anti-terrorism legislation, has arrived at just this. At one level, the Review Committee’s finding that there is no prima facie case against Mr. Vaiko and eight others emerges from the obvious — the lack of even an iota of evidence to show that they were engaged in terrorist activity or for that matter any form of illegality. At another level, the Committee’s conclusion flows naturally from the Supreme Court’s ruling in December 2003. In that judgment, the Court, while upholding the constitutional validity of POTA, sanitised what was possibly the most controversial and dangerous provision in the law, by making a vital distinction between merely expressing verbal sympathy for a banned terrorist organisation and acting in a manner that invites support for its activities. Once the Court held that Section 21 of POTA will be attracted only when there is a criminal intention of furthering terrorist activity, the cases against Mr. Vaiko and eight of his partymen, who were booked for making allegedly pro-LTTE speeches, had no legal leg to stand on.
The Central Review Committee’s finding that there is no prima facie case against the nine is binding on the Tamil Nadu Government. The anti-terrorism law was amended last year with the main purpose of giving the Central and State Review Committees, which enjoyed hardly any powers under the unamended Act, the authority to determine whether POTA has been misused in a particular case and, where warranted, direct a State Government to withdraw it. The new powers granted to the Review Committees were upheld by the Madras High Court, which ruled that if such a Committee came to the conclusion that a case “is fit to be withdrawn from prosecution, it can address the State Government which, in turn, has to instruct the public prosecutor” to withdraw the case. The Court added the caveat that it was then up to the public prosecutor to “apply his mind independently” and for the special court trying the case to decide whether the plea for withdrawal “is acceptable or not.”
Having pursued the cases against Mr. Vaiko and his partymen in the face of grave misgivings and serious legal doubt, the Jayalalithaa Government must show the good sense to have them withdrawn quickly. The outrageous injustice done to Mr. Vaiko, who spent 19 months in detention before being released on bail, is incalculable and impossible to redress. The MDMK leader would be fully justified in seeking exemplary compensation for the manner in which his liberty was curtailed, for reasons that smack of political vendetta and through the (mis)use of a draconian provision in a bad law. The Central Review Committee’s findings on the MDMK cases must be welcomed. At the same time, the very fact that such Committees are needed to review specific POTA cases constitutes a damning indictment of the anti-terrorism law, a shocking admission of the wanton misuse it has been and can be put to. It is only a matter of time before the cases against Mr. Vaiko and his partymen are formally brought to a close. But POTA — the legal basis for the agony they were made to undergo — remains on the statute book. For the sake of liberty and democracy, the campaign for scrapping the indefensible law must continue unabated.
Editorial 6: VAIKO’s Saga [The Hindu, May 10, 2004]
The wheels of justice may grind slowly, but grind they do. There may be some way to go before Vaiko, the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader, is freed from the case slapped on him under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. But in his long and courageous quest to absolve himself — a period that saw him spend 19 months in jail and have his passport impounded — Mr. Vaiko seems to be on the home stretch. The Supreme Court has stayed his trial, as well as that of eight other MDMK partymen, in the special POTA court. The Tamil Nadu Government has been legally obliged, following the Madras High Court’s recent ruling, to instruct the public prosecutor to withdraw the cases against them. The High Court held that the Central POTA Review Committee’s April 2004 order holding that the cases against the nine persons had no leg to stand on and must therefore be withdrawn “was binding on the Tamil Nadu Government.” It also declined the State Government’s plea to quash the order of the Review Committee.
Does the Tamil Nadu Government’s instruction to the public prosecutor mean the cases are, in effect, withdrawn? Not quite. In an earlier ruling the Madras High Court held that even after such an instruction was issued, it was up to the public prosecutor “to apply his mind independently” and it was eventually for the trial court to decide whether the plea for withdrawal was acceptable or not. This circuitous and problematical ruling, which has been upheld by the Supreme Court, was based, first, on the ground that the independence of the public prosecutor (supposed to be secured by Article 321 of the Code of Criminal Procedure) must be safeguarded. The problem with this reasoning is that in politically sensitive cases the independence of the public or special prosecutor is a myth, as the Supreme Court discovered before ordering the transfer of the Jayalalithaa wealth cases and the Best Bakery Case to another State. The other issue involved in the Madras High Court’s ruling was the perceived need to insulate an ongoing case in a judicial forum from the direct influence of executive or quasi-judicial authorities. It remains to be seen how Tamil Nadu’s public prosecutor, who only recently adopted the strident position that there was “no question of withdrawing the case,” reacts to the official withdrawal instruction. Another issue relates to the current status of the June 30 deadline set by the Madras High Court for the completion of the trial. All democrats must hope these questions have become academic after the Supreme Court issued an interim stay on the trial of Vaiko and the eight others in the special court.
The legal ground beneath the Tamil Nadu Government’s infamous case against Mr. Vaiko collapsed when the Supreme Court held that POTA could not be used against those who merely expressed sympathy or verbal support for proscribed terrorist organisations. Accepting the contentions of Attorney General Soli Sorabjee, the Court held that POTA’s Section 21 was attracted only in cases where there existed a criminal intention to further terrorist activity. The cases against Mr. Vaiko and his eight colleagues were built entirely around certain general speeches they made in support of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Eelam demand. There was not a quark of evidence to link them to any terrorist activity. The Vaiko case is a shocking illustration of how the `rule of law’ has been — and can continue to be — misused to settle political scores in `Shining India’. It is emblematic of the inherent danger and mischief of POTA and a compelling argument for sending it to the dustbin of history.