The darling of scamsters now in pit of despair

VIJAY DEO JHA

RANCHI

“The ground had receded horribly; the drop appeared terrifying out of all proportion to this height he had reached. From the ground such a height would have appeared un-noteworthy.”

From The Vertical Ladder by William Sansom

If not the story, at least former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda is metaphorically close to Sansom’s poor boy Flegg, who was instigated by his friends to climb a vertical ladder to reach dizzying height of an old gasometer. At the top he was in the grip of isolation and fears with no way to climb down: his friends had vanished and ladder removed.   

Decency doesn’t allow commemoration of jail going anniversary of a convict or a suspect. On November 30, three years back, former Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Koda was arrested for massive corruption charges which investigative agencies are still struggling to find out exact figure of heist. Couple of his associates in alleged corruption (Koda & Co, that’s how investigative agencies often refer to) Binod Sinha, Vikash Sinha, Vijay Joshi etc were arrested and charge-sheets were produced against couple of them.

Koda has been granted bail in few cases but denied in the rest because he was dubbed as mastermind and key of huge loot of public money of a poor state: Rs 2500 crore and even more. It is beyond the capacity of a normal calculator of nine digit flash to compute the alleged heist. But if one divides the money made by Koda and his cahoots, Binod and Sanjay Choudhary, by the number of days he remained as CM (23 months) and as minister of mines in the BJP-led Arjun Munda government, it is whopping Rs 3.6 crore a day.

Those in the power portal who controlled him as Chief Minister and baptized him in corruption are loath to admit him as friend. And the man is desperately begging sympathy and support against frustrating numbers of sections of penal code imposed on him which he refutes false and fabricated. “Charges against me are politically motivated. Sometimes they (investigative agencies) say I made more than Rs 3,549.72 crore, sometimes the figures go higher. They claim I invested in abroad. Why don’t they bring proofs? How long will they keep me in jail,” Koda had told The Pioneer during Presidential election.      

This year Income Tax Department issued him a notice to pay fine of Rs 1200 crore against his undisclosed assets. The CBI and Enforcement Directorate claim Koda individually minted Rs 1,340 crore out of allotment of mining lease, rural electrification projects and others.

Koda may not be totally wrong in claiming innocence but probing agencies are also not wrong in claiming the man compromised with conscience to indulge in corruption.

A simple and innocent tribal man rose from a petty miner at Gua mines in Chaibasa to Chief Minister of Jharkhand and earned a place in the Limca Book of Records for being the first independently elected legislator to have led a State for such a long time.

But what goes up must come down. “I don’t know whether he regrets or not from behind the bar but he must be thinking as to what went wrong with him in the pits of despair. Look at this man everybody despise he has become a generic name of corruption in Jharkhand,” Ashok Sarangi a resident of Gua known to Koda observed.

Koda is critical legal and political story: the man who took the wrong man’s company just like Flegg.