Interrogation of some Economic Offenders
The traumatic moments of barbaric punishments for barbaric crimes were still fresh in the minds of the people. The President decided to use the opportunity of interrogating some of the economic and other offenders. He told his Legal Advisor to get him the list of the guilty of the major scams, persons found guilty of trading in weapons, narcotics and gold smugglers found guilty and sentenced to death by torture. The Legal Advisor produced the list. The President went through the list and selected a few after careful deliberations.
The first was a politically connected person called Soma Sunder Rao, an official of the State Trading Corporation who was found guilty of showing undue favor to a foreign company for supply of fertilizer and thereby causing a loss of about Rs 100 crores to the Government. The second was a couple who were directors of a financial company who had misappropriated about Rs 200 crores of public deposits. The third was a business man from whose residence a dozen AK 58 rifles had been recovered. The fourth were two people from whose room 10 kg of narcotics had been recovered. The fifth had been arrested at the Delhi airport with about 30 kg of gold in his possession.
The President said that the persons would be interrogated in public at the Talkatora Stadium the following Sunday. Full media coverage was to be arranged. A full alert was to be placed at the all airports to stop any person named during the interrogation from fleeing the country. Police teams should be standby to arrest people who were named during the interrogation.
The stadium was full of inquisitive people. What would the President do this time? In the center of the ground were six 200 liter drums on what appeared to be improvised chulas (ovens using firewood). There was a water tanker and a heap of fire wood, a jerry can of kerosene and matches. The drums were securely tied to six posts. Inside each drum, unseen by the crowd were two bricks.
The guilty men and women were brought to the stadium and taken to the drums. They were given a collar microphone and headphones were placed over their ears. They were then put into the drums and firmly tied to the posts. Water was filled up to their waists. The fire wood was placed under the drums and a little kerosene was sprinkled on the wood. The fires were then lit. The water began to warm. The bricks on which the guilty men and women were standing began to get hot. The persons began to feel the hot water on their thighs. At this stage the firewood was pulled out. The interrogators were now ready for the questioning. They explained that if the person did not answer the questions asked correctly and fully, their lower bodies were going to be boiled alive.
The interrogations were long but there was no need to light the fires again. They all talked giving full details of who were their collaborators.
Soma Sunder Rao revealed the names of the people who had conspired with him to defraud the government, how the papers were prepared, how the foreign exchange was cleared and how much kickback was received. He gave out the list of persons who got the kickbacks and how the money was received. He also explained what he did with the money he had received and agreed to return the money. He agreed to provide proof of what he had said and to provide information about the activities of the other conspirators.
The couple revealed how they had siphoned off the money, how they had transferred some of the money to foreign banks and what they had done with the money. They agreed to get the funds back into the financial company so that its liabilities could be paid.
The arms dealer revealed his source of arms and the modus operendii of the system. He revealed the names of persons to whom weapons had been sold. The narcotics and gold smugglers also came clean.
The public interrogation did not have the same public impact as the barbaric punishment for barbaric crimes. Many places were raided based on the information provided. More documents, cash, weapons, narcotics and gold were recovered. Many arrests were made. Many rich and powerful people were nabbed. Crores of rupees were recovered. Interrogations became easier. For the first time, there was considerable success in dealing with economic offenders.
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