Chattarpur Farms............!

I was always fascinated by the grandeur of the lavish farms (farm houses) in the Chattarpur area of new Delhi and somehow managed to move closer to them by shifting to a rented flat nearby. My curiosity drove me closer and closer to the farms and Opened a new Kaleidoscope for me to view the world. The revelation about the Character of owner of these farm houses has suffocated me and honestly speaking,I feel choked passing by......................
We have to be grateful to Ramesh Sharma, the crook, who allegedly has scripted in real life the most bizarre rags to riches story, one that would defy the imaginations of a Manmohan Desai or a Javed-Akhtar writing due. A man who began his career selling coat hangers on Delhi streets ended up owning 15 imported limousines, a helicoptre, some 32 priceless properties with one or two farm houses thrown in for good measure. And Ramesh Sharma, as the story goes, is only a lackey of the real don, Ibrahim Dawood. Even so, he presides over a Rs. 500 crore fortune. He wines and dines lavishly. At his table, according to the same story, have sat Prime Ministers, Chief Ministers, bureaucrats, top cops and businessmen. He even tried to get into the Lok Sabha from Phulpur constituency, near his home in Allahabad. And just prior to his arrest he had set up shop as a political party, of all places, in a Government owned bungalow allotted to an MP.
About Ramesh Sharma it is said that anything that caught his fancy had to be owned by him. It could be a helicoptre, an imported car, a prime property, a stretch of land along a beach, or even pretty lasses. Girls, like houses, were a very special weakness. They came in handy while entertaining VVIPs. A firm believer in the philosophy of reward and punishment he was unsparing of anyone who dared to defy. You might call him a saddist but then Sharma always compensated the man or woman who had faced his wrath earlier in the day or night. That will always be the case with those who do not accept no for an answer. It meant little or nothing to him to keep someone confined to one of his numerous houses for weeks and months; you had to sign on the dotted line.... or else. That's how he acquired wealth, all of it ill-gotten.
The funny part of the Sharma story is that you could not really describe him as a man from the underworld. He grabbed a farm in Delhi's Chhatarpur area, built it up on a lavish scale and for the sake of record made it a place where the rich and famous could hold their parties (for a price). And every time he grabbed a new property there would be one of those typical Ramesh Sharma sizzling parties at his Mayfair Gardens house, another property acquired fraudulently. And to silence anyone who dared to object to these vulgar shows of opulence he always had a Prime Minister, a Cabinet Minister or a police chief or may be a couple of Chief Ministers on his guest list.

To be Continued....................

Ramesh Sharma truly speaking is a mere symptom of a widespread disease which is slowly eating up the body and soul of India. He has not done anything that has not been done by his peers in the past. The Haji Mastans, Vardarajans, Yusuf Patels, Dawood Ibrahims, the Gawlis, these are some of the beacons that Ramesh Sharma has tried to look up to. When he sought to dabble in politics he was only hoping to emulate the 20 odd criminals occupying ministerual berths in the Kalyan Singh Government in Uttar Pradesh. Ramesh Sharma has every reason to envy Hari Shankar Tiwari, whose 37 indictments in cases involving murder, have not prevented him from staying on as a UP Ministers. What was so special about Hari Shankar, Sharma might well have asked himself. Or, for that matter what special attributes does a D.P. Yadav have to be a member of the house of elders (Rajya Sabha)-apart from his dubious criminal record. Ramesh Sharma like most done trying to establish an empire all his own, could be likened to a tiger on the prowl, roaming the jungle that is India, grabbing anything that catches his fancy. Never mind the fact that a real tiger kills only when it is hungry. Tiger Sharma's appetite is insatiable. And in his war on society blackmail, extortion, kidnapping, death and dishonour are the tools he has used with uncaring abandon. Women may have been lured to his many houses, compromised and filmed but so have many others, more "virtuous'' men, also been compromised. There are a dozen videos available with the police, seized from his premises, which to say the least, are not only distasteful but more ominously show important personalities indulging themselves in silly ways. A young colleague who has seen two of these says she was horrified by what she saw.
If Sharma has been able to carry on for 11 long years after moving to Delhi from Bombay it is a matter that should alarm us as a nation. There have been occasions in the past when he was caught on the wrong side of the law but no action was ever taken. The local police had reason to believe that Ramesh Sharma was becoming a threat to society yet it chose to wait and watch. Complaints against his house grabbing were not even entertained by the police. It's not the fear of a Dawood Ibrahim or of a Chhota Shakeel that caused the police to look the other way; it was in all probability his proximity to a former Prime Minister, two former Chief Ministers, a former Defence Minister, a Cabinet Minister at the Centre, top bureaucrats and policemen and some prominent businessmen (hawala link) that persuaded the police to give Sharma a virtual free hand. No one has yet told me how he managed to get a false passport for Dawood Ibrahim's mother and that too in a day. There are set procedure for issuing such "emergency passports. Someone somewhere in the External Affairs Ministry must have issued instructions to enable Mother Dawood to get a passport in one day. Non-bailable warrants against the man remained unserved for more than a year and a half at one of the New Delhi police stations. What kind of immunity did Ramesh Sharma enjoy and who made it possible? This is a question that needs to be answered. And it must be answered immediately. For, we have also had the report about Sharma having feted (alongwith an expensive gift) a Delhi Police Commissioner at the wedding of the policeman's daughter. What makes the allegation sound bizarre is the disclaimer issued by one of the two Police Commissioners whose daughters were married around the time the gifts are alleged to have been made. Taking the cue from the Commissioner, who has denied the allegation, the local police has now come out with a statement that no police official was ever involved socially with Ramesh Sharma. At the same time you have this funny bit about South Delhi Police refusing to handover the keys of two of Ramesh Sharma's houses to the Crime Branch on the ground that a prior court order was required. It took direct intervention by the Commissioner of Police to persuade the South Delhi Police to handover the keys to the other group of policemen who were trying to locate some papers mentioned by Ramesh Sharma during his interrogation.

To be Continued....................


If some of the complainants are having second thoughts about giving evidence against Sharma it is understandable. For, Sharma, to be sure, will be out on bail soon and given the impunity with which he has got away with heinous crimes, the potential witnesses have every reason to be wary. Five women who had registered complaints against him have already backed out and some others are frantically seeking police protection. Ironically Ramesh Sharma enjoyed police protection (Y category) for a while courtesy the then Minister of State for Home, Subodh Kant Sahay. Curiously, Subodh Kant says that he must have been given protection because everyone who asked for it in the early 90s was given it. Another twist to the tale is that Subodh Kant's Secretary then, is the Joint Police Comissioner handling the Ramesh Sharma case now. Or so it seems from the statements attributed to him by local dailies.
Sharma may or may not be found guilty by our courts but the episode tells us that the country is virtually slipping into the hands of likes of Ramesh Sharma. That's not an exaggeration. Look around in your own State and you will see how crime and criminals are flourishing. The nexus between criminals, policemen and politicians is growing thick and fast and at all levels of our society. Sooner or later this unwelcome mushrooming of crime and criminals may very well overwhelm the Indian State.