Rajesh Talwar will be released today for lack of evidence.

After the lull in the spate of murder stories, the press now has fresh fodder for a few more days with a new angle. And the Talwars will witness the brunt of the collective hypocrisy of our media. Suddenly, overflowing tributes will be paid to their stoicism; their tragedy will be highlighted with an eloquence that will put Sophocles to shame. The Press are likely to jostle, nudge, elbow, shin, kick, shove, beat and do what ever it takes to be ‘breaking news’ an ex-pression akin to and apt in context with ‘breaking wind.’

Yesterday one already saw a preview of that with one channel herding together all the close members of the family for airtime and questioning them on how they coped! A couple of months back they had wondered what the parents “felt” on seeing the dead daughter!! The curiosity of the press is indeed breathtaking when it comes to such cunning investigative questioning and observations. Now they are talking of how they could not imagine what Talwar must have gone through in 50 nights in that cell without the space to mourn for his child!

There were occasional bleats of ‘accountability’ but they were not enough to pepper an egg. The façade of the free press in India exercising its power of being the people’s voice in full-throated glory is alive and well. Thank you.

The main issues ofcourse remain unanswered. The ‘show’ quickly moved on to display  Arushi’s scrapbook beginning with  baby pictures in what they thought was a rare tribute to the dead child. Belated yes, but now is the time to do it for who knows two months back how the whole thing would have turned out. Now it is time to underline the tragedy of the parents and exploit their privacy further.  All of this allows us to walk the sensational path without grappling with the larger question of what should be done with the UP police or the CBI or whoever else investigated this crime and botched it to the point where an innocent man was given a double tragedy in one go.

No research was done on what happens to these agencies in other countries. No comparisons  were drawn.  Is there a law on what should happen next? Don't we need a law to rap the ‘protectors’ of law for their ‘carelessness’? Ofcourse when there are strict guidelines for scientific investigation in developed countries, as opposed to kitchen gossip theories, the fact that it may not be necessary for them to have any measures against failures, is another matter. Here the CBI feel that they can exonerate themselves by saying Krishna the compounder ‘misled’ them and sent them on the wrong track. Hello? That kind of investigation surely my dhobi can do? I wonder what the national exchequer pays to keep these goons in business!

We were subjected to the Director of the CBI – a man who I am sure would have been as bad in Hindi as was in English. His ‘waj’ (was) and hij’(his) and ‘the Arushi’ – was the only thing I could use at the moment to uncharitably jeer in the absence of any kind of punishment that he is likely to come across. His lack of intelligence, his floundering, his indifference to the responsibility that should have been shame-faced were all symptomatic of an apathetic government officer who knows he is never likely to be held accountable.  The clips of the police slurring Arushi’s and Rajesh Talwar’s character as motive for the crime were aired once again with no mention of the fact that the man was only transferred or suspended which is like a  mild rap on the knuckles.

The media and police need to be made accountable. Power is certainly not meant to be used like a butcher’s knife. I wonder if anyone will ever tell the media a few home truths about itself or about the police when a mike is thrust in front of them for opinion. And that includes the Talwar family. It is because we never speak up, we are not brash about such truths, that the culprits merely exchange one tragedy for another and carry on in exactly the same fashion.  As I have said before when shame is lost everything is lost.

In a lot of countries the politicians flinch under the media glare, people who are in power quial under the interrogation, sweat and squirm in their seats under the relentless badgering they get from interviewers. The press speaks for the people and expresses their anger and frustration coherently. That is the job of the press: to cogently put across the thoughts that all of us have and which a lot of us don't know how to word with economy and punch. If the media does what it is meant to do,  people in power will fear it, and worry about coming into positions where they can be asked to account in front of the whole country and made to look like fools. It will stop every criminal and goonda from entering the fray and literally and figuratively having a blast. When is the media likely to understand its own power and stop behaving like hags around a fire?

The special tragedy of this event is that this can happen to any of us. This veneer of democracy in which we live is but a thin veil. The Talwar case has just told us that and we have watched the ‘show’ and clucked our way through it  and 50 nights seems small when we compare it to the undertrials who spend lifetimes waiting for trail… so hota hai yaar…. investigation toh karna padta hai na? …. koshish toh ki na? … ab aage upar wale ki marzi…

Are we for real?