In most places when you buy a
kilo of oranges or peas or cucumbers they come in a nifty paper sack made of
folded newspaper with a little wheat paste to glue the edges. I was heading
north from the deep south, Tamil Nadu, and was eating my lunch in some field or forest
and one of these newspaper sacks caught my eye. It was a newspaper from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu
and the headline was “Fake Court: HC [High Court] Says Yes to Lawyer’s
Suspension”. It was about the equivalent of our Barr Association that had
argued in court that it did not have the authority to dis-bar attorneys for
corruption. Of course the High Court disagreed.
In the US we are insulated from
corruption. Its not that we don’t have corruption, we have massive corruption
but its all at the upper levels of society and while we are all effected by it
it does not hit us in the face everyday. In India, the disease of corruption
affects everyone’s daily life and occurs from the top all the way to the
bottom. But back to the article…..
The corruption that they were
caught at was the breathtaking thing barely mentioned in the article. What
these lawyers did was band together and created a totally fake judicial system
where the verdict is never in question. So one lawyer posed as the judge, they
set up a fake court room. The judge was even set up with a fake official
government car, the bailiff was fake, the only thing that was real were the
lawyers arguing the cases, yet they were in cahoots with each other to rig the
outcome.
How they got cases from the
corrupt police was not explored in the article, but the outcome is everyone
charged was heavily fined and then the ‘fines’ were split among all the
participants according to their share in the process.
This particular court lasted for
more than 7 years and was only ‘caught’ when they were exposed by a reporter
and the government was forced to deal with it.
This one even set up a fake police station
It is mindboggling how many
people would have been involved and paid to turn a blind eye to have such an
enterprise flourish for so long.
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