Barkha Dutt barking up the wrong tree

Barkha Dutt writes in the Hindustan times

It reflects the cynicism of the times that we live in that the “encounter” that killed Uttar Pradesh (UP) gangster Vikas Dubey has not come as the slightest shock to anyone.

Which times? We have cheered this sort of thing for 30 years. Back in the Sixties, when Naxals killed Judges, Courts themselves decided that the country could only survive through extrajudicial killing though, no doubt, politicians might find it convenient to appoint a Commission of Inquiry if the bad guys were all of one particular caste or religion.  Thus, the Indian judicial system became a joke. Cases drag on from decade to decade till the defendants die and witnesses turn hostile. The fact that Justice can be quite swift in horrific cases where the culprits are poor and lack political connections reinforces, it does not reduce, our disgust with and distrust of the Courts.

It is almost like a death foretold. The criticism — as happened with the Hyderabad police’s elimination of four rape accused last year — is likely to be dismissed as the fuzzy, needless hand-wringing of liberals.

What criticism? There has been none. We expect a couple of over the hill  presstitutes to virtue signal so as to raise our blood pressure and help us recall why we voted for Modi.

After all, Dubey, it will be argued, was the man responsible for the murderous assault on eight policemen. Why should anyone waste any angst on a man like him?

The answer is he was a Brahmin and so the local Brahmins are upset. But Yogi Adityanath doesn't seem to care. That's a good thing.

That is missing the point. The same lawlessness and absence of due process that makes it possible for the police to avenge the killings of their own men, permits the men in khaki in Tamil Nadu to push rods and sticks up the private parts of a father and son, Jayaraj and Bennicks.

Quite false. 'Encounter killings' have to be cleared higher up the Police chain of command or else have to be inconsequential. The T.N case is about Magistrates not doing their job. They are supposed to ensure that people in custody haven't had rods shoved up their bums.

You can’t outrage over one and see the other as morally permissible.

Nonsense! Two innocent people were killed by mad dogs in police uniform. Those rabid cops should be hanged. By contrast, a killer was killed before he could start manipulating the Criminal Justice system. He was denied the opportunity to run his Crime Empire from the security of a prison cell where, you can be sure, he'd have had access to plenty of luxuries.

We can and should be outraged by the T.N case while expressing delight at the U.P outcome.

Yes, in one case the victims were hapless citizens who did nothing but supposedly keep their shop open for a few minutes beyond the lockdown-stipulated curfew. And another case, the self-declared don of Kanpur, was a brutal, violent thug. But the principle that makes one extrajudicial killing possible cannot but spill over into the responses of the police force across the board.

The moral principle involved is concerned with the punishment of evil-doers and the protection of the innocent. The legal principle may be quite different. But we are not lawyers. But, as far as the law is concerned, you are innocent till proven guilty. Not everybody is prosecuted if suspected of a crime. If it is not in the public interest, or there is little chance of conviction, a prosecution may be dropped. It is not the case that the law is dedicated to punishing all crime. It is dedicated to protecting the innocent and serving the public interest.

Thus we see, both from the moral and legal point of view, the two cases are completely different. We are right to approve of the killing of the killer while demanding justice for the torture and murder of two innocent people. Barkha is barking mad.

Simply put, you cannot morally calibrate fake encounters.

Yes you can. What Barkha can't do is make a coherent argument of any sort. She has shit for brains. Look at what she says next-

There’s also the sheer tackiness of the script. Even as stories go, this one has a weak plot and poorer direction.

This cretin has been lying her ass off all her professional life. Her scripts were tacky, no question. We didn't care so long as there was some rhyme or reason to her lies. Then she lost the plot completely and her stock plummeted.

Consider the tackiness of her present argument. What does it consist of? She simply states false propositions- e.g. you can't say this fake was good while that fake was bad even though we do this all the time. This fake Rolex, I bought for 20 dollars is good. I get complimented on it and it keeps better time than my Omega watch which cost me 2500 quid. That fake Rolex is bad. It fell apart after one day. People in the street pointed at it and laughed saying 'what an obviously fake Rolex! The guy wearing it must be an utter cretin!'.

We 'morally calibrate' fakes and fictions and cases of inauthenticity all the time. Every type of Ethical theory- Deontology, Consequentialism, Intuitionist Virtue Ethics or Soteriological Ethics- has a more or less 'buck stopped' manner of doing so. Multi-dimensional decision spaces can always be rendered uni-dimensional in a univocal manner.

We are actually being asked to believe that a man who dramatically surrendered after a five-day chase from Uttar Pradesh, through Haryana and Rajasthan before ending up in a temple in Ujjain suddenly turned on the police and attempted an escape after the car ferrying him overturned.

No. We are not being asked to believe any such thing. All that has been done is that a proforma reason has been supplied for why no further legal action need be taken- though no doubt an inquiry will be held to appease local Brahmins. No one in their right mind thinks the public interest would be served by looking into this. Suppose a politician, wishing to curry favor with UP Brahmins demands an inquiry or uses this as a stick to beat the Yogi with. What will happen? It will be like the fuss over the Shahabuddin killing which helped, not hurt, Amit Shah. True, some Assembly seats may be lost to Congress- as the Brahmin party. But, over all, U.P will solidify behind Yogi. He is the next Modi.

This is the same man whom we have all seen on video, being slammed against a police car and whacked on the back of his head by an unarmed officer, as he shouts, “Main Vikas Dubey hoon, Kanpurwala”

In other words, we know why he had to be shot like a mad dog. This guy believed he could pull off the same trick he had in 2000 when he shot a legislator in a police station and, at his trial, the cops who were present as witnesses turned hostile.

Curiously, of course, the media, that was tailing the convoy taking Dubey back from Madhya Pradesh to UP, was stopped two kilometres ahead of the site where the alleged accident and subsequent encounter takes place.

So, at least the cops did the deed out of sight of camera phones. Perhaps they first had a little fun. Good for them. Their's is a dreary profession. It is not often that they get to mete out justice.

The police will also have to explain why Dubey’s car is switched at the last moment. Video footage shows Dubey in two different cars at different points in the journey. And, of course, the most basic question of all: How was a dreaded gangster not cuffed?

These questions answer themselves. Dubey could easily intimidate or offer to bribe some but not all cops involved. Switching cars is a good idea if there is a chance of an ambush- which there clearly was- or if the loyalty of some members of the group becomes questionable. However, there is no great need to create a plausible scenario- save to appease local Brahmins. For the State as a whole, it is better if it is believed that the C.M himself gave the nod to the gunning down of this rabid dog. Local Brahmins however will be appeased by depicting the guy as a 'Dabangg' chancer. Who will play Dubey in the Raees like movie Bollywood is sure to make? I suggest it should be Barkha Dutt. She may talk bollocks but has big brassy balls.

Even if his car did overturn-- and who is buying that — how was he able to make a run for it that he needed to be shot? And if he was shot, why was he not shot in the leg, so that he could be recaptured alive and be interrogated?

Why do presstitutes go on repeating stupid lies? Don't they understand that they won't be believed- or we have an excuse not to believe them- if, for a change, they tell the truth or raise sensible questions? For this reason the police don't have to explain anything. Twitterati can supply plenty of answers to questions raised by presstitutes.

Or is that the exact point. Dubey who was implicated in 62 criminal cases, including five cases of murder and eight cases of attempted murder, could not have thrived for 30 years, without the patronage of the rich and powerful.

In other words, he'd have run his Criminal Empire from jail.

A disturbing letter has done the rounds on social media, purportedly written by one of the eight policemen murdered by Dubey. It alleges that station officer Vinay Tiwari was in cahoots with Dubey. The letter, which was unmarked, was officially denied. But, since then Tiwari and another of his colleagues have been suspended on charges of tipping Dubey off about the police raid that was meant to arrest him.

Obviously, the guy had some policemen on his payroll. Why not some judges as well? Does barking mad Barkha not understand that she has just destroyed her own case?

Eerily, a public interest petition in the Supreme Court just a few days ago demanded the judiciary’s intervention, predicting this is how Dubey would die. Instead of delivering justice for the eight policemen murdered by Dubey, the actions of the Uttar Pradesh police force have further sullied the reputation of the uniform. Not too many people will believe that the police encounter was motivated by collective rage at what the gangster had done to their own comrades.

 Yes they will. Some cops may be on the take from a particular gangster. But not all are from the same gangster. It is in the class interest of the police to kill cop-killers.

The suspicion that Dubey had far too many secrets to out and that it was best to pack them off with him to his grave, will now never be shaken off.

It is not a suspicion. It is a fact.

Even before his death, a widely-shared video allegedly showed Dubey claiming the backing of two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators (though in 2001 he was accused of chasing another BJP leader into a police station and shooting him in broad daylight).

Does Barkha think mentioning the name of a political party in this connection means anything? Everybody knows we are speaking of crooks who move from one party to another.

His mother separately claimed that her son is now linked to the Samajwadi Party, which the party denied.

No doubt, she or some other member of the family will get a ticket from one of the parties to fight the next Assembly elections.

The demand for his call records to be placed in the public domain is legitimate.

So is the demand that Barkha get a brain transplant.

The country has a right to know which people of influence — whether in the police, government or Opposition — Dubey was in touch with.

The country also has a right to know which Companies and Political Parties and foreign entities have paid off Barkha and her ilk and what they got in return.

The families of the eight policemen who lost their lives in the line of duty may mistakenly believe that justice has been served.
The very opposite has happened.

No. The guy was shot. He isn't out on bail or running his Criminal Empire from Jail. 

Yet, again, in a country that proudly gave even the terrorist involved in the 2008 Mumbai attack, Ajmal Kasab, due process, we have faltered on the fundamentals of law.

Kasab's trial was a propaganda victory for India. However, the proper response would have been to hit the terrorist training camps across the border. This stupid woman is pretending that observing 'due process' matters. It doesn't. Only the public interest matters provided there is some proforma fig-leaf to protect shitheads from the nakedness of the truth.

Journalism, like the Law, attracts vain, meretricious, fundamentally deluded, cunts. This is not to say that both professions are useless. But they have no fundamental value. What matters is that Society protects itself and pursues the public interest. That means telling journalists and lawyers to go fuck themselves if they start babbling nonsense.