FOXNews.com - Politics, Crime Go Hand-in-Hand in India

Politics, Crime Go Hand-in-Hand in India

Thursday, December 07, 2006

By GAVIN RABINOWITZ, Associated Press Writer

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NEW DELHI — A decade ago, lawmaker Shibu Soren sent henchmen to spirit a former aide to an eastern Indian forest, where he was killed and buried, prosecutors said, to silence a corruption allegation against his former boss.

A conspiracy charge in the killing didn't stop Soren's political rise in a country where a remarkable rogues' gallery of bandits, racketeers and murderers have filled the halls of power. Soren even managed to become India's coal minister during his trial.

He was only forced to resign after being convicted last week and sentenced to life in prison, drawing new attention to a problem besetting the world's largest democracy: criminal politicians.

Indian law only bars a person from running for office once they are indicted by a court, which often happens years, even decades, after an arrest. It's even harder to dislodge someone actually holding office.

In one northern state, Uttar Pradesh, 92 members of the current 403-member state assembly have police charges lodged against them. One lawmaker, Ramakant Yadav, won election from jail. His brother, Umakant Yadav, a member of the national Parliament, has been charged with murder.

While a majority of these politicians are simply corrupt, part of an endemic culture of graft, many of those charged with more sensational crimes have made their names defying the law to champion the causes of smaller ethnic minorities and low-caste Hindus in a country still deeply divided by class, caste, religion and wealth.

"The prevalence of criminal incidents in some sectors is a hardship indicator," said Pran Chopra, a New Delhi based political analyst. "One man's bandit, or an outlaw, is another's Robin Hood."

Soren, 62, is from the eastern state of Jharkhand where his people, the impoverished indigenous forest-dwelling tribe members known as Adivasis, occupy the lowest rungs of India's complex social ladder.

He rose to power championing their rights, making his name in the 1960s by leading a campaign to keep mining companies from tearing down forests to build coal mines and free his fellow tribal members from land lords and moneylenders.

Earning himself the nickname "Jungle Leader," he was particularly harsh with the moneylenders. Locals claim with pride that he killed several of them.

He was indicted for his alleged role in the 1975 mob killings of 11 people in a Muslim village _ part of a campaign to gain political influence for tribal people in eastern India. It succeeded in 2000 with the creation of a new state, Jharkhand, where tribal members are a majority.

He built on that success to become federal coal minister _ first in 2004 and then again in 2006, staying on the job through the trial and only resigning at the insistence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after his conviction last week. Under Indian law, he could have kept the job until a court ruled on his appeal.

According to the charges Soren conspired with four others to kill an aide who was kidnapped from a New Delhi home and taken to the city of Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand. There he was held before being taken to a nearby forest and killed. Soren was not present during the slaying.

The body was buried in the forest, but uncovered by police investigators in 1998. The other four men were also convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

After his conviction, the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party was quick to accuse the government of corruption. But they quickly quieted down when one of their own lawmakers, former cricket star Navjot Singh Sidhu, was convicted of manslaughter in a road rage case a few days later. He received a three-year suspended sentence Wednesday.

Despite Soren's conviction, many of his supporters have not wavered.

"Shibu Soren is God and God can do no wrong," said Deepu Marandi Akela, a friend in Jharkhand.

India's most famous bandit, Phoolan Devi, became a member of Parliament in 1996 after a career roaming central India's desolate valleys, allegedly stealing from and killing wealthy upper-caste landowners who she said exploited poor, landless farmers.

"Her biggest crime was killing oppressors in a certain area. On the strength of that she was quite popular there," said Chopra.

Devi, however, was never forced from office by a conviction. She was murdered while still serving as a lawmaker in 2001, by one of the upper-caste Hindus she had fought against.