[It is not easy for a corruption case to mystify Indians, but
this one, in which politicians and officials in Madhya Pradesh are accused of
taking bribes in return for helping candidates get high scores, is
extraordinary. More than 2,000 people have been charged, hundreds are in jail,
hundreds more are on the run and scores have asked for police protection. But
these are not the figures that have the nation’s attention. Over the past few
months, media outlets have been drawing attention to the fact that some of the
accused, most of whom were under the age of 40, have died in possible murders,
suicides, accidents or other, unexplained, ways. If most were in fact not
murdered, the story suggests an even more frightening possibility.]
By Manu
Joseph
 |
|
Activists protested on
Wednesday against corruption on a state government examination
board in Madhya Pradesh, India.
|
NEW DELHI — Nobody died today. At least not as we went to press.
This is newsworthy for millions of Indians who are following the
unraveling of a system of corruption in a state
government examination board — widely known by its Hindi
acronym, Vyapam — that conducts tests for college admissions and jobs. Dozens
who were associated with the case have dropped dead. Some activists who accuse
politicians and government officials of killing those who might rat on them
insist that more than 50 have been murdered or died under suspicious circumstances.
Several news reports put the figure at more than 40. Investigating officials
say it’s around 25. One politician has said that the figure is above 150.
It is not easy for a corruption case to mystify Indians, but
this one, in which politicians and officials in Madhya Pradesh are accused of
taking bribes in return for helping candidates get high scores, is
extraordinary. More than 2,000 people have been charged, hundreds are in jail,
hundreds more are on the run and scores have asked for police protection. But
these are not the figures that have the nation’s attention. Over the past few
months, media outlets have been drawing attention to the fact that some of the
accused, most of whom were under the age of 40, have died in possible murders,
suicides, accidents or other, unexplained, ways. If most were in fact not
murdered, the story suggests an even more frightening possibility.
In late June, as national interest in the case was escalating, a
29-year-old suspect died in police custody. The official cause was heart
failure. The same day another suspect died of a medical ailment. Last week, a
television journalist who was investigating the story died of what officials
say was a heart condition.
At the time of his death, he was talking to the father of a
young woman who was listed in 2014 among those suspected of using fraudulent
means to pass an exam. The investigators later discovered that she had died in
2012 in unclear circumstances.
A day after the journalist’s death, a professor who was believed
to have been helping with the investigation was found dead in his hotel room.
The autopsy results were not conclusive, but doctors speculated that his death
may have been caused by a combination of alcohol and medicines. A day later, a
young policewoman who had gotten her job through the tainted process died in
what was called a suicide. Her family said her in-laws had been harassing her.
On the same day, a policeman who was being investigated in the case hanged
himself. The police said he was depressed and had debts.
A scandal of this nature says more about India than is at first
apparent. It is not just that Indian politicians and government officials can
be extremely dangerous, or that corruption is so widespread that it would be
wrong to call it an anomaly because a way of life is not an anomaly. The case
also suggests that official statistics may not accurately capture the full
scale of untimely deaths in India.
Anand Rai, an activist who had gone to court asking for an
investigation into the corruption, told The Economic Times: “Ten of the deaths
that have occurred so far are in suspicious circumstances. The rest may be a
matter of coincidence.”
It does appear that not everyone who has died was murdered.
There could have been other causes. As a minister said, “Whoever is born has to
die one day.” It is possible that the suspects who committed suicide had
reasons that had nothing to do with being investigated. About 2,500 have been
charged or questioned by investigators, and if this were a sample for a study
on how Indians, especially those under the age of 50, die, then the number of
the dead in this sample suggests that at least 12 in every 1,000 Indians perish
in suicides or traffic accidents, or because of illness or alcoholism, which is
higher than the official overall death rate for the nation — about 7.4 per
1,000.
In a reasonable conjecture, the high death rate among those tied
to the case suggests that more Indians die before their time than is commonly
believed.
Follow Manu Joseph, author of the
novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People,” on Twitter at @manujosephsan.
