It has become a cliché to reiterate the fact that justice delayed is justice denied. At the same time, there are examples of how the long arm of the law has an uncanny knack of catching up with criminals many years after they have committed a crime.

Sitting alone in a hotel room in Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India’s coal capital, watching television news anchors talk about the Supreme Court of India and the political future of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, recalling terrible events that took place nine and a half years ago in February-March 2002 in Ahmedabad, I am reminded of two instances of how long the long arm of the law can indeed be.
On April 28, 1982, parts of the body of a young man were found along the railway track near Dhanbad railway station. It was subsequently discovered that the limbs and the torso belonged to a 29-year-old auditor Saswata Sundar Das who had been employed by a Kolkata-based audit firm that had been engaged to audit the accounts of Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL). Das had unearthed widespread irregularities in the sand-stowing contracts of the public sector company that is responsible for producing the bulk of the best-quality metallurgical coal in the country that is used to fire blast furnaces in steel plants. Sand is supposed to be stowed in underground mines after coal has been extracted. But contractors engaged to transport sand, in collusion with BCCL officials, often fudge account books to indicate that far more sand has been transported than what has actually been done.
Das paid for his life because of his honesty. It took more than 24 years for the long arm of the law to book some of the criminals who were responsible for his murder. On June 28, 2006, a special court at Dhanbad, instituted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), found 11 persons guilty of conspiring to murder Das. Among them were four former employees of BCCL. A local activist informed this correspondent that after this episode, mafia gangs no longer tangle with auditors. If the gangsters cannot buy up the few honest officers that are still around, they are just left alone. Sand-stowing remains a rather lucrative business for contractors. The rationale is simple: no point killing the goose that lays golden eggs just because there are a few straight guys left in a corrupt milieu; ignore them.
In a different part of the country, the Gali Reddy brothers had converted Bellary district in Karnataka into a “new republic” where their writ ran unchallenged until recently. What former Karnataka Lokayukta Justice N. Santosh Hegde’s final report on illegal mining (presented on July 27) has meticulously documented is how the Gali Reddy brothers used their power and pelf to run the administration in the iron ore-rich district and subvert the rule of law. When they were in power, honest officers were transferred and any person who dared criticise them was sought to be ruthlessly suppressed.
Despite charges of physical violence and a number of non-bailable criminal cases pending against them, the Gali Reddy brothers and their associates were able to operate with impunity. Among those who dared to defy their writ and were consequently brutalised were a former employee turned whistle-blower V. Anjaneya and rival mine-owner Tapal Ganesh.
On September 5, the CBI arrested Gali Janardhan Reddy, the alleged kingpin of illegal iron ore mining in Bellary and the adjoining district of Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh. He used to be minister for tourism, youth affairs and infrastructure development in the B.S. Yeddyurappa government. His brother-in-law, B.V. Sreenivas Reddy, who is managing director of Obulapuram Mining Co. (OMC), a firm controlled by Janardhana Reddy, his brothers and associates, was also arrested. The arrest came almost 21 months after a first information report against the company had been lodged by the CBI in December 2009.
It is fair to ask why Janardhan Reddy, who continues to protest his innocence, was arrested when he was. Many contend that he had more than enough opportunity to tamper with evidence and cover up his tracks. The CBI reportedly managed to recover more than 30 kg of gold and over `1.5 crore in cash from the premises of the former minister. Was this “small change” for him, a person who has been accused of masterminding a scam that runs into mind-boggling sums of money?
In June 2009, the Gali Reddy brothers spent over `40 crore on gifting a diamond-studded crown to the Tirupati temple. But they were also instrumental in destroying another temple because it came in the way of their illegal mining activities. It has been contended that individuals close to Janardhan Reddy were responsible for the destruction of the 200-year-old Sugalamma Devi temple located in the mining lease area of OMC — while mines were being exploded. In September 2006, a case against the Reddy brothers was dropped despite objections from the police and the law department in the state.
While producing Blood & Iron, a documentary film on illegal iron ore mining in Bellary, this correspondent had interviewed K.G. Kannabiran, one of the founders of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, in Hyderabad in June 2010 and asked him whether he was hopeful that Janardhan Reddy would one day be arrested. He was clearly sceptical and remarked: “I have a very dismal view of the long arm of the law. It doesn’t reach the people who should be reached.”
The noted human rights activist died on December 30, 2010. He could not view the film nor could he learn about Janardhan Reddy’s arrest. I wish he had been alive for I could then have told him that on rare occasions, the long arm of the law reaches out and that, in a jail in the city in which he used to live, a former minister in the Karnataka government is sharing space with a disgraced business tycoon, B. Ramalinga Raju.

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta is an educator and commentator