Reply To The Open Letter Of Mr Arvind Kejriwal, Prisoner No. 3642

Dear Prisoner No. 3642,

After reading your letter, I was enraged. The gripping anger was steering me towards saying the same old line that “nothing better can happen to this country”. There is one person who is speaking against the corrupts and, instead of putting the culprits behind bars, the system is harassing the complainant!

The aam aadmi in this country cannot raise his voice against the system. The aam aadmi compromises because he does not want to spend his life in the complexities of the system. And the aam aadmi is bound to live a miserable life until he puts this system to a standstill showing his power.

Then I realized this is the exact way you wanted to me to react after reading your letter. Didn’t you?

Opening my mind and gathering the facts is what I did in the next, and be surprised, five minutes. You see Prisoner No. 3642, after that moment only I decided to shun the idea of calling you by your name because you yourself chose the identity of a prisoner over that of a leader.

You have a good opening line in your letter, which is a fact, that you do not understand what your crime is. But come the first paragraph and you are on wrong footing.

Let me remind you Prisoner No. 3642, you did not ‘expose’ former BJP president Nitin Gadkari in your case as you claim (to do so) because you failed to submit any evidence against him. And that is the precise reason that a defamation case was slapped (ahemm…) against you. So, please, do not feed me lies.

About every case mentioned in the next paragraph, you say you have exposed the corrupts, namely Kapil Sibal and Sheila Dikshit. But Prisoner No 3642, let me remind you that Dikshit was not even named in the FIR directed by your government. Later, the ‘evil’ Congress at the centre instated her as Kerala Governor to give her constitutional immunity and your dharna model of politics failed to take notice of it.

Sibal’s is also a defamation case filed by his son and we agree that all the other courts in all the other defamation cases has allowed you to sign an undertaking to be present in the court on each hearing day. But your current court is not at all bound by their rulings/orders. The judge of your current court is perfectly capable of delivering a judgment of her own, and if you have problems with it, you may appeal in the higher court.

You tell me in your letter that you being jailed sends a message across the country that the common man cannot raise his voice against the corrupt politicians in this country. But I disagree. There are many common men and women in this country who have raised their voice against the corrupts, politicians included, and have received justice. They were not sent to jail. You can see for example Mr Subramanian Swamy who has constantly been doing so.

On the other hand, you were sent to jail in judicial custody because you refused to obey the law of the land. You refused to furnish a bail bond. As a citizen of this country, you need to obey the judiciary and its procedures. This is what a common man does. He does not seek any preferential treatment for he is merely filing lawsuits against some men and calling them ‘corrupt’ even if he cannot substantiate his claims.

And I dare say, if you are doing this for recovering the lost seats of Delhi in Lok Sabha election via upcoming assembly elections, let me tell you that you are onto a wrong start. You lost because you deviated from the path you should have been on. You lost because you failed to read the pulse of the public. You lost because you failed to address the real issues. And you failed because you harped on your theatrics rather than delivering them results while you were in power.

Prisoner No. 3642, you need to mend your ways. If you cannot see yourself as the leader, how can we?

I hear the jail life is rough. It either makes you or breaks you. I hope the rest of the days of your extended judicial custody give you time to contemplate your decisions. Another complainant, Manish Tewari, who is a lawyer himself, had to apologise to Gadkari in the court for the same mistake you are committing. Maybe you could do the same and work on the real issues than ballooning fake ones.

Sincerely,

A Voter

P.S. I will not make copies of your letter and circulate for it is not environment friendly.