Sleaze vs sleaze | Congress vs BJP: Top 10 political sex scandals

Have the allegations against former finance minister Raghavji put Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan on the back foot in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh? Disgraced Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)  leader Raghavji, who was expelled from the party over his ‘sexual escapades’, is not the first politician to find himself in the line of fire. Certainly, Raghavji’s continuation was becoming an embarrassment for the Madhya Pradesh government in an election year. The Opposition Congress moved a vote of no confidence against the Chauhan regime. The motion will be debated on Thursday and Friday before being put to vote. The saffron party enjoys comfortable majority of 145 in the 230-member Assembly and faces no threat.

 

 

It seems that history has repeated itself often. Irrespective of the precise background of this specific case, the larger point that needs to be emphatically made is that the moral corruption flourishes under the benign oversight of the lawmakers. A compact disc (CD) containing graphic scenes purportedly featuring Raghavji, 79, and the domestic help became public last week before the Assembly convenes for the monsoon session. 

Significantly, in the age of the internet, India is fast shedding its shyness about making sex scandals a matter of public debate. The moot question is: whether these cases should be treated just as a private matter between two consenting adults or an act that denotes abuse of power. Voyeuristic in nature, cases like these have often resulted only in titillation, humiliation and little else. 

 

How can ordinary people trust politicians and lawkeepers if they end up abusing the people they are supposed to protect. The lurid details of the sex scandal paint a shocking picture of how influential men indulged in immoral activities. Such incidents make a mockery of the term 'civilized society'. Political scientists are of the view that technology, if misused, is dangerous because it can be used to settle scores and damage the credibility of individuals.

In 1978, Babu Jagjivan Ram was on the verge of becoming the first Dalit Prime Minister of India but a sex scandal involving his son Suresh Ram put an end to his political career. The 46-year-old son of the then defence minister shown in a series of explicit photos with a Delhi University student, Sushma Chowdhary, in monthly magazine Surya, edited by Indira Gandhi’s daughter-in-law Maneka Gandhi.

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Political sex scandals are about much more than just people getting caught with their pants down. Our netas are prone to indiscretions of a sexual nature.
Some of the more bizarre cases …

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I) Abhishek Manu Singhvi: After securing Rajya Sabha seat in 2012, the senior Congress lawyer-spokesman was allegedly caught in a compromising position in his Supreme Court chamber.

Singhvi resigned as chairman of the standing committee on law and justice.

Mukesh Kumar Lal, the driver of Singhvi for several years, was accused of filming the CD secretly and blackmailing Singhvi to make the CD public through various media channels.
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II) Mahipal Maderna  Secretly recorded video shows former Rajasthan minister in romp with murdered nurse and midwife, Bhanwari Devi.

Investigations revealed that Bhanwari Devi was allegedly blackmailing Maderna and Congress MLA Malkhan Singh and demanded crore of rupees based on a CD in which Maderna and others were seen in a compromising position with her.
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III) ND Tiwari  The 85-year-old Congress veteran, who was serving as Andhra Pradesh governor, had to step down from office after a video clip allegedly showing him in a sex romp with three women were aired by a Telugu TV channel.

Tiwari’s character came under the scanner a long time ago when a lady Ujjwala Sharma accused him of fathering his son Rohit Shekhar and the son demanded a DNA test.
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IV) Sanjay Joshi   He once used to be the RSS representative in the BJP. The RSS pracharak had to sacrifice the general secretary's post following the alleged sex CD controversy.

The sex CD surfaced in the midst of the BJP's silver jubilee celebrations in Mumbai.  He was later reinducted in the party but the disgrace never allowed him to regain his authority and command.
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V) Gopinath Munde   The then Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Munde’s image took a battering over his illicit affair with a Pune-based Tamasha dancer Barkha Patil.

Both have denied the relationship. Besides, there’s no evidence that the Maharashtra BJP strongman used his official clout to help get Patil a flat in Pune for a price much less than the market rate.
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VI) Gopal Kanda   Former Haryana minister was accused of abetting the suicide of a 23-year-old former air hostess Geetika Sharma who was earlier employed in Kanda's MDLR airlines.

Charges of rape, unnatural sex and abetment of suicide were framed against Kanda. The air hostess was found hanging from the ceiling fan of a room at her Ashok Vihar house in north Delhi on August 5, 2012.
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VII) Amarmani Tripathi  Former Uttar Pradesh minister Tripathi jailed for life for killing a young Hindi poetess Madhumita Shukla who was carrying his unborn child and had refused to abort it despite repeated threats.

In May 2003, Shukla, 24, was gunned down from close range in her two-room apartment in Lucknow's Paper Mill Colony. The murder had created uproar in UP, leading to Tripathi's exit from the Mayawati Cabinet.
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VIII) PK Kunhalikutty In 1987, Kerala was rocked by a sex scandal known as ‘ice-cream sex parlour scandal’. The scandal relates to allegations that an ice-cream parlour in Kozhikode was being used as a cover to lure young women into prostitution.

Kunhalikutty quit as industries minister in the Congress-led UDF government following the charges. He, however, did not figure as an accused in the case.
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IX) Jalgaon rape case   Heavyweight politicians, businessmen and officials accused of running a forced-sex racket involving approximately 500 women, many of them minors, in Maharashtra.

The gang lured school- and college-going girls into their trap, raped them, taped the acts which were then used to blackmail the girls. Two Congressmen arrested, but later acquitted for lack of proof.
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X) Harak Singh Rawat   The then Uttranchal revenue minister was accused in 2003 by an Assamese woman of having fathered her new born child. Indira Deori alias Jenny from alleged that the Congress leader had fathered her child only.

The political storm that followed her allegation lost steam when the CBI tabled its report to the court stating that the DNA of the child did not match that of the minister.