Some time back I remember seeing Bina Ramani on TV, being interviewd by Ruby Bhatia on one of those mind-body-health shows. Ruby has been places on that show, a monastery in Eastern India, an ashram in the South etc. and has interviewed various people on the show. On that show she interviewed Ramani and asked her the usual questions. Ramani replied in the way one would expect – how she did Yoga, how she worked to make the world a better place etc. . I expected nothing else. After all on TV you bring out the good side, no ? I would too.

Ramani has been on the news often, she seems to have various connection with film-wallahs; wasn’t her name always on those “clothes-designer credits which seem to roll by really quickly ? Overall she seems to be in the right place at the right time and with the right connections. As it happened It was also her restaurant where Jessica Lall was murdered. Apparently Bina, her daughter Malini and her husband George Mailiot didn’t see the crime but had a pretty good idea on who the killer was. So, they tried to stop him from getting away, reported his vehicle outside the premises and rushed Jessica to the hospital. The 3 were also the only 3 witnesses to stand by their original statements about Lall’s murder and identify Manu Sharma in court as the man they’d tried to stop from escaping. He (as the Ramanis said in court) looked like the man who shot Jessica.

Bina Ramani was recently arrested and remanded to judicial custody by the Special Investigations Team, for forgery and cheating with regards to licences issued for her restaurant. And while I’m no fan of Ramani and would want her (and all the other thousands of offenders in India accused of cheating and forgery) to get their just deserts, this excessive enthusiasm on the SIT’s part to go after Ramani instead of the main accused – Manu Sharma seems extremely suspicious. The plain truth is that Sharma killed Lall, Ramani did not and all the trumped up charges and investigations and raids into Ramani’s business cannot counter that fact, however much corrupt policemen and an easily swayed judiciary might want us to believe it.

Call me naïve, but I believe Ramani was brave. I do not cast her in the mould of a role model, nor have I yet called for the public to dedicate a temple her honor or build a monument to remember her bravery. However, considering the fact that the police are a pariah most Indians wish to avoid, (because guess what – they follow the rule of the rupee), and that if you oppose a person with political connections you are in big trouble, (because right or wrong that person will win) Ramani has risked her neck to implicate Manu Sharma. Maybe she thought she was too powerful ( a Page 3 person in her own right, no less) and would not be touched by the powers that be – I don’t know. The bottom line is that she stuck to her guns, which is way more than the 100 other witnesses to the crime have done.

Not that I blame the witnesses that swerved from their statements either. With the current record of the police and the judiciary at hand, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that opposing a powerful person or the son of a powerful person is harmful to one’s health. Take Shayan Munshi who was apparently standing next to Lall when she was shot, and who later changed his incriminating testimony and said that he had been mistaken in his original statement because he couldn’t read or write Hindi, and had taken the police for their word. Really ! My, my, such trust – and that too in the Indian police – moves you, it does. I keep back my tears with an effort. But what to do – I can imagine the guy’s quandary – how to retract a true statement – the Hindi story seemed the most plausible I guess.

With all the outrage that was raised due to NDTV’s SMS campaign (and which I believe led to the decision to reopen the Lall case) I had really thought that justice would be served this time. But with the SIT going after a witness, rather than the killer who’s roaming free, and running a nightclub and who’s father is STILL a minister in the Haryana government, it seems that political connections still have top billing.

Money rules. And what is money to the rich and the politically well-connected ? For a Rahul Mahajan – not much more that a scrap of paper rolled up to snort coke.