Recent media reports have been peppered with stories which involve the use of bulldozers; either as the fulcrum of the news item or peripheral to the main story. In any event the reports remain intriguing, often alarming, but always on the fringes of what is acceptable and legal.
Ankita Bhandari, the 19-year-old daughter of a former security guard, took up a job as a receptionist at the Vanantara resort in the Laxman Jhula area of Uttarakhand, for a salary of Rs 10,000 per month. She hoped to finance her studies beyond class 12 because she dared to dream of a better life; a dream hampered by financial problems in the family. The resort was owned by Pulkit Arya, the son of a former BJP minister of state, Vinod Arya. Even before she drew her first salary, she was reported missing, and her body recovered six days later, from the Cheela canal near Rishikesh. The cause of death was drowning according to the autopsy report from AIIMS, Rishikesh. There was an uproar with protestors demanding justice and blocking the Rishikesh-Badrinath highway. The final report indicated ante mortem bruises and injuries on her body. The protests grew violent with attacks on the resort, and the family refusing to cremate her body. Eventually the owner and two assistant managers were arrested after it was admitted that she was pushed into the canal following an altercation. She was being pressurised into providing “special services” at the resort. Corroborating evidence from other staff members emerged, along with incriminating phone calls.
Shockingly, a bulldozer was called in to demolish the resort. Who ordered the demolition is a mystery; but it amounted to destruction of a crime scene in absolute contravention of acceptable criminal procedure. Why was the resort bulldozed with such speed? Accepted that it was an illegal structure, but surely this requires a court order, more so because it was a crime scene, which could have provided crucial evidence. As it happens, there were cases of cheating and forgery filed against Pulkit Arya in 2016 in Haridwar. The state DGP Ashok Kumar’s reassurance that enough evidence would be produced to “hang her killers” sounds hypocritically hollow.
Bulldozers, have figured in other cases also. Sonali Phogat, a BJP leader and 2008 national vice president of BJP Mahila Morcha, went to Curlies restaurant in Anjuna along with her PA Sudhir Sangwan and her partner Sukhwinder. There she was forcibly given drugs. Sonali’s condition deteriorated due to an overdose and she passed away. Curlies restaurant was marked for demolition for flouting the coastal zone regulations. The National Green Tribunal, upheld the Goa Coastal Zone Management Authority’s earlier order to demolish the shack. With lightning speed, bulldozers demolished the restaurant, restrained only by a SC order, which stayed the demolition of that part of the restaurant whose legality was not disputed.
The restaurant has been functioning for nearly 40 years and has been in the news before, for shady activities. One can’t help wondering if the death of a BJP functionary lubricated the wheels of justice; again, destroying a crime scene. Take the case of Narayan Rane’s bungalow. The BMC issued notices to the firm owned by Rane, questioning the unauthorised alterations to their eight-storey bungalow at Juhu, and asked why it should not be demolished. The Bombay HC ordered the demolition and reprimanded the BMC for their inconsistencies in first refusing an NOC and later, granting it on a second application. The SC dismissed the firm’s plea challenging the HC order and gave the firm three months to demolish the structure, failing which the BMC should act as per the law. Have the bulldozers run out of fuel in this case?
The village panchayat of Se, Old Goa had, in January, issued a show cause notice to the owner of the bungalow in Ella village. The legality of the permissions given for a construction at the heritage site were questioned and a demolition demanded. Hearings have been deliberately delayed and dragged on, on one pretext or another even as Union minister for tourism and culture G Krishan Reddy in a reply to the TMC VP, Luizinho Faleiro, admitted that laws were violated when the structure came up. That being the case, where are the bulldozers? Waiting for fuel?
The term “bulldozers politics” emerged in UP under the Yogi Adityanath government. He even earned the nickname ‘Bulldozer Baba,’. MP’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan, followed with a copycat act, earning the nickname ‘Bulldozer Mama’. More than 50 properties were destroyed in Madhya Pradesh’s Khargone district, including 16 homes and 29 stores of accused stone pelters. Karnataka followed suit with similar demands to demolish the properties of riot accused. Bear in mind that there is no provision in law for the bulldozing of any property solely because the owner stands accused of a crime. The order must come from a court and is viable only if the construction is illegal and against the provisions of building rules, in force. In April, following communal violence in Delhi’s Jahangirpuri, local authorities ordered the demolition of certain structures in an eviction and anti-encroachment drive. The SC intervened to stop the demolition; and had to issue a second order when the first was ignored for an hour. Street carts and even registered legal buildings were destroyed.
The practice has now spread from UP and MP, to Delhi, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Uttarakhand. It has emerged as an extrajudicial tool, a power statement, not only against accused criminals but also targeting minority communities; a tool for intimidation for political ends. I suppose that is still better than the spectacle of being arrested, tied to a pole, and publicly flogged by plain clothes police officers, in Undhela, Gujarat, in the name of justice.
(The writer is a founder member of VHAG)
