Five-star hospitals beckon crooks unable to flee India

Two years have passed since Dheeraj Wadhawan, former promoter of Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL), was arrested in connection with the Yes Bank ‘money laundering’ case, but he has spent more time in a luxury hospital than behind bars.

Since his arrest on 26 April 2020, for allegedly getting investments of Rs 3,700 crore from Yes Bank for DHFL in exchange for “substantial undue benefit” to bank CEO Rana Kapoor and his family, Wadhawan has been repeatedly denied bail but spent only about nine months in jail.

On April 8, 2022, the Bombay High Court while dismissing the CBI order saying enough was enough, allowed him to undergo one more treatment at the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital Mumbai this time round for nasal surgery

In 2002, PV Ranga Rao, son of the former prime minister of India PV Narasimha Rao, allegedly fled his relentlessly pursuing creditors and law by getting into a Hyderabad hospital where he stayed put for a year in the ICU.  

So, it is not as if hospitals have suddenly sprung up as an excellent hideout or sanctuary for crooks either seeking to evade law or avoid the claustrophobic confines of a prison.  Be that as it may.

Cite health conditions to extend fugitive status

Those facing extradition, cite health or hygiene (lack of it) in Indian prisons to extend their tenuous hold on their fugitive status.

Vijay Mallya India’s first officially declared fugitive facing extradition from UK has been relentlessly pursuing the health ground---Arthur Road jail is unhygienic---to stay put in his salubrious London home.

Another fugitive who fled to London, Nirav Modi, has been reportedly taking advantage of his suicidal tendencies to stay put in his London hideout. His self-serving argument is if extradited to India, he might end his life.

Touché!  Hospitals, malingering and hypochondria alas now are the new-fangled weapons to escape prison life with grim implications of living amidst squalor and stench.  For them, living in splendid hospital isolation is any day better than rotting in prisons with lesser mortals.  

Prisoners' health, a sensitive issue

Prisoners’ health evokes strong emotions especially with Human rights organizations that spring up in the defence of prisoners.  The Right to Health is glibly cited by them as a sub-set of and integral to right to life.

The CBI stance which is the norm in most of the countries is prisoners’ health is state’s concern and they have to put up with what the state has to offer in this regard.  In other words, all prisoners rich or poor have to be treated in government hospitals, period. 

Ironically, Wadhawan has been denied bail but allowed access to swanky hospitals.  Ironically, too, it is the same ill-gotten money that had gotten him into trouble leading to his arrest that will bankroll his five-star hospital treatment.  

Subrata Roy, Sahara promoter, paid the Tihar jail a whopping Rs 1.23 crore in 2015 for providing him a special cell for a year. That shocked the nation’s conscience even more though it is common knowledge that prison rule-books are invariably tweaked in favor of the rich and the resourceful.  Show me the man and I will show you the rule applies more in prisons than anywhere else.

The five-star prison syndrome has something perverse underpinning it.  The prisoner gets to hobnob with his gang of advisors, family and partners anytime away from the gaze of prison guards.  For lesser mortals condemned to remaining inmates, there is a specified time for visitors. 

The homemade or five-star food lulls them into the belief that they are a class apart and not subject to the rigors of a penitentiary. Prison life is supposed to be the time for penitence but not for the scheming white-collar criminals who laugh up their sleeves at the naivete of the law and the magnanimity of the legal ecosystem that indulges their cravings for creature comforts. 

More than a decade ago, Rajat Gupta of McKenzie and Co fame, who courted infamy by violating the strict insider-trading norms in the US, offered to serve the people of Ghana instead of serving a term in the New York prison in recognition of his otherwise impeccable record as a US citizen. 

The Court contemptuously dismissed his show of contrition with the acid remark that he cannot beat insider trading charges by trumpeting his history of philanthropy any more than Mother Teresa could use her missionary work to fend-off bank robbery charges. 

To the vast millions of Indians, the Mother Teresa allegory was uncalled for and in bad taste but the court was right in not indulging him just because he was rich.

It's time to codify rights of prisoners

It is time we codified the the rights of prisoners into a uniform regime so that the impression that the richer and the resourceful amongst them were impervious to the rigors of the prison life was disabused.

The Narendra Modi government had done well to enact the Fugitive economic offences law in 2018.  It is possible that it might have made wannabe fugitives go slow.  It is also possible that the government now keeps an eagle eye on the potential fugitives chastened by the past experiences.  

Either way, it is certain that the crooks thus trapped within the country would be itching to break free of the dreaded prison life.  Five-star hospitals for them could be the manna from the heaven. 

(S Murlidharan is a veteran columnist and tweets @smurlidharan. Views are personal)

Published on: Wednesday, April 13, 2022, 09:54 AM IST