Who will guard the guards?

News comes to us in fragments. Scandals, accidents, allegations, verdicts - we rarely connect the dots and see the power-play involved in what seem like isolated incidents stretched over many years. More so because we are so totally removed from it and dont have any stake in it. They are after all, stories of  "other people".

This is the story of a family friend, which I learnt just yesterday. I had no idea whatsoever, and it left me shaken to the bone. Here is the gist, without too many details.

Building a medical institute from scratch is no easy play - the licenses, the paperwork, the permissions, the bureaucracy, the brown envelopes, the marketing, building the competencies and facilities, the investments, the risks - many a time people give up because it doesn't seem worth all the trouble. But this gentleman was not one of those - he persisted and succeeded in building  what went on to become one of the  biggest and most well-reputed medical institutes in India.

Once it was established and started earning good repute, he got a call from a  Union Minister asking him to resign from the institute. The Minister wanted to gift his son-in-law the Directorship of the institute. This gentleman (lets call him SJ) refused. But not wanting to earn the wrath of the political party in power, he agreed to have the son-in-law co-appointed as the Joint Managing Director.

They didn't agree to this compromise. SJ had the patronage of the Chief Minister in the state (from a different political party, of course) which protected him from life threats and so he was able to continue  without any problems for a while. But then, the Union Minister and his party hacks decided to discredit SJ and filed a false case on  him, accusing him of fraud. They created dummy witnesses and bogus evidences. But still, he refused to resign from his post.

In the meanwhile, the Chief Minister changed because his party lost power in the state. Now, there was no hope for any help from them. But SJ and his family fought till the last - they lost their assets, their house, their land in their effort to save their own repute and that of their institute. They fought for seven long years. The case went up to the Supreme Court and finally, the verdict came in their favor...all their struggle had paid off....

The very next day, there was yet another false case filed on him. He resigned immediately.