Sex and power are inseparable bedmates. When the dirty linen comes out of the closet, careers are destroyed and lives are ruined or lost. Gopal Goyal Kanda — powerful Haryana politician, former home minister and a business tycoon who rose from rags to immaculate white khadi as the promoter of an airline and owner of casinos in Goa and Kathmandu, besides other profitable businesses — is now a prisoner of justice. For the former footwear salesman, the shoe is on the other foot after close associate and protégé Geetika Sharma committed suicide and named him as the reason.
What is it that makes so many young, beautiful middle class women become victims of these dangerous liaisons? Love? Power? Money? The good life? Anuradha Bali aka Fiza, who eloped with powerful Haryana minister Chander Mohan killed herself after he left her — her body was found in a state of advanced decay; she died alone and friendless, away from the power and glamour that she was briefly associated with. Bhanwari Devi was greedy for power and she paid with her life: making a sex-CD to blackmail a prominent politician was a fatal decision for this nurse from Rajasthan. In August last year, Zahida Pervez, lover of influential BJP politician Dhruv Narayan Singh with whom she had “blasting sex”, murdered her rival, Shehla Masood. It’s a long list that includes the poet from Lucknow, Madhumita Shukla, who was shot dead after she became pregnant by the influential minister Amarmani Tripathi, and the infamous Naina Sahni who was murdered by her politician-lover who stuffed her body in a restaurant’s tandoor.
In Geetika’s note, she blamed Kanda and wrote he “is a man of no shame and no guilt. He always takes advantage of others. He has illegal relationship with a woman ... and a girl child also with her. Still he keeps on hitting on girls. He is a shameless and worst man I have ever seen in my life. In the name of relationships, trust, god, he cheats people and harass. He always lies. He lies to his family, kids, people around, everyone”.
Truth is on trial here. Was Geetika Kanda’s mistress? Or was she an ordinary starry-eyed girl who felt cheated by the man she accuses of having a glad eye? The police claim she had several abortions and her family was close to her benefactor, even going on family trips to Tirupati with him. Is Kanda a male version of Catherine Trammel in Basic Instinct, harassing Geetika to come back and work for him after she left him for a Dubai job, forcing her to sign dubious contracts even after he had allegedly sent a forged police letter that forced her to be fired? Then why did she come back to rejoin Kanda as a director in his company? Why was such a young girl heading one of his educational trusts? Why were salaries of all airline staff hiked when Geetika was given a raise? Questions abound regarding this hapless, frightened and heartbroken young girl who had committed suicide because Kanda was “hurting, harassing and sabotaging” her family. The truth has been so far grounded like MDLR — Kanda’s airline — and will take off only after the investigation is done.
The power that had attracted Geetika and her family to Kanda now inspires fear in the victim’s family; her brother feels the former minister will use his political and business contacts to get off scot-free — a despair that is shared by most Indians when big time politicians or businessmen are involved in scandals. Still, power continues to attract women and becomes a fatal cocktail of lust, dependence and influence. Whether it is Monica Lewinsky or the Profumo Scandal’s protagonist Christine Keeler, history is full of libido and politics. It is often a fatal mix that ends in despair. Or like in N D Tiwari’s case, in shame. Power seduces, it blinds. It also kills young women who are like moths to its flame.
ravi@newindianexpress.com
-Sunday Standard