In Defence of Professor Lotika Sarkar

I am both an admirer and life subscriber of Mainstream (No. 1593). I am deeply touched and gratified to read the feeling of distress expressed by some of the justice-holders of our society in the March 21, 2009 issue of Mainstream: “In defence of Professor Lotika Sarkar†. I would like to join the signatories in supporting this cause, and would like to do whatever possible to get back the occupancy of the house to Professor Lotika Sarkar. I have known Lotika from 1948, when we were together at Cambridge, and she has been like an elder sister to me ever since.

Hope our supporting her cause will have some effect.

Nitya Nand

B-62, Nirala Nagar, (Former Director, Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow)
 Lucknow-226020
 0522 2788587, 4043229

I compliment the Mainstream and the Friends of Lotika Sarkar who have come forward to champion the cause of the octogenarian former don of Law Faculty of the Delhi University. The authorities must take note of the issue with promptitude for redress to her grievances. If criminals had burgled or committed dacoity in the house of Professor Sarkar, one would not be surprised. But the man who has posed most serious threat to her is an IPS officer of the Bihar cadre. He has thrown his greedy eyes on the properties of Professor Sarkar. The media has raised the question: how did the officer Nirmal Dhondiyal claim to have a deed of gift other than by pure and simple fraud and deceit? This raises the genuine question are how women in their late years safe anyway in Delhi or in NCR? While Soumya Vishwnathan and Jeegisha Ghosh have fallen in recent times victims of criminals and anti-socials for easy money, women like Lotika Sarkar are targeted by men like Nirmal Dhondiyal and his son and wife. They have ingratiated themselves as friends of the landlady. She did not anticipate that they were actually Trojan horses.

What has pained me most is that Nitish Kumar, the Chief Minister of Bihar, has earned media acclaim as the Vikash Purush, but he is not known to have taken note of the senior IPS officer’s disgraceful conduct and misdemeanour. Nor has the Government of India moved against the officer as the appointing authority. The State Government, under the law, is the disciplinary authority. The primary responsibility for disciplining an IPS officer lies on the State Government. There may be many more Nirmal Dhondiyals in the cadre of the IPS. So it merits urgent attention of the State as well as the Union governments to wake up and move against such dangerous elements in uniform. People would be scared to speake openly against uniformed men at all in whatever position, high or low. They are no better or worse than the criminals.

We look forward to the Union Home Minister, P. Chidambaram, taking exemplary action against Nirmal Dhondiyal to restore a sense of confidence in all aging and infirm men and women in the twilight of their life.

Motibagh,

New Delhi Sipra Biswas