Rumour vs truth: An ongoing battle

Julio Ribeiro

Julio Ribeiro

When a person is wronged through the medium of rumours, he or she reacts in myriad ways. Some ignore the insinuations falsely directed at them as they have more important matters to attend to, others sulk and retreat into man-made shells, the vicious ones plot revenge. A former Commissioner of Police of the ‘Urbs Prima in Indis’ waited for his retirement from service to write his memoirs in the course of which he tried to dispel the readers’ doubts about his actions and his integrity.

Rakesh Maria was the police chief of Mumbai for a few days short of three years from October 2012 to September 2015. He is a Bombay boy, like me. I think we were the only two IPS officers born and raised in the city which we were later to police! My family had settled in the city some 200 years ago, having migrated from Goa, which in that epoch was the colony of the Portuguese. Rakesh hailed from Punjab. His parents had settled in the Bombay suburb of Bandra in the mid-20th century.

Unlike me, Rakesh always aspired to become a police officer. He dreamt of being a policeman, a Sherlock Holmes in uniform. Unravelling murders and other crimes was his calling! He was a good student and a good sportsman. He cleared the competitive examination in the very first attempt. He went on to become an excellent police officer, much in demand by senior officers on the lookout for the extraordinary to tackle difficult problems or situations.

The above average are perpetually in demand in a service like the police. Because they are in demand, they also attract the jealousy that is concomitant to a hierarchical organisation. Very early in the career of such an officer, mean rumours start circulating about the officer’s intentions, interests and integrity. It is always difficult to sift false rumours from fact. Those who initiate the rumours revel in the fact that anything bad is more likely to be accepted among peers and possible competitors for higher office. These individuals, in turn, spread what they have heard to numerous friends and very soon the worst is believed even if there is no iota of truth in the wicked stories.

It was rumoured about Rakesh that when he was entrusted with the investigation of the serial bomb blasts case in Mumbai in March 1993 after the Babri demolition inspired riots of 1992, he made a declaration to the Income Tax authorities under the Amnesty Scheme of some Rs 2-5 crores! Many people I know believed the rumour. In his book ‘Let Me Say it Now’, Rakesh states categorically that he was officially asked to explain the allegation. He gave the government of the day permission to check the facts with the Income Tax Department. Prompt came the reply that no such declaration had been traced in their records. It required a book to clear the doubt.

A second doubt that had been planted in my mind was about a fake piece of information of a possible terrorist strike that had been passed on by Rakesh to the then Jt Commissioner (L&O) in what was then interpreted as a ruse to enhance his reputation. I know that the IB’s top man in Mumbai was furious. Rakesh has explained this episode as merely passing on information culled by a professional hacker obligated to the Crime Branch of the city police that he was heading at the time.

But it was the Sheena Bora murder investigation that delivered the blow that his detractors were awaiting for years! Sheena’s biological mother Indrani Mukerjea and her current husband, the Media mogul Peter Mukerjea, were being interrogated at Mumbai’s Khar police station when Rakesh was completing his three-year stint as the city’s police chief. The excitement of one more sensational crime inquiry being successfully completed in the few days left for his term to end overtook Rakesh. He visited the police station four times under the lights of the electronic media!

Everyone, including me, thought he had abandoned all other duties to concentrate on this murder case, in order to go in a blaze of glory! Rakesh tries to explain his motive and his interest in a quick, clean investigation. He succeeds in proving this, as far as unbiased observers like me are concerned. But his detractors apparently succeeded in influencing the Chief Minister to attribute unsavoury motives to the man.

On September 8, 2015, 22 days before he completed three years in office, the day the Chief Minister flew to Japan for a meeting, Rakesh Maria, one of the most successful of the city’s Police Commissioners, was ‘promoted’ and relieved of his charge. Now it was the Chief Minister’s turn to be at the receiving end. People attributed wrong motives to him as Rakesh was popular with the general public whose grievances he always tried to address.

I read Rakesh Maria’s memoir covering 600 pages in just five days. This would have been impossible before the lockdown, that keeps me indoors compulsorily. I am glad I read it because any doubts I had harboured about a good man were cleared. My interactions with Rakesh while he was in service had always been pleasant. As IGP-Training, my NGO had close contacts with him. We found him to be a positive person, interested in justice and fair play that any good police officer should.

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