After a failed visit to Delhi wherefrom he was expected to bring back his daughter and trying unsuccessfully to stash away a few tears, Muthuvel Karunanidhi is suddenly worried about the future of Indian democracy.

In DMK mouthpiece Murasoli, he has written about his concern over the continued incarceration of his daughter Kanimozhi in connection with the 2G spectrum case. “If courts, one of the pillars of Indian democracy, hesitated to provide legal rights and protect the basics of the law, a question will rise in everybody’s mind where Indian democracy is going and about its future,” the peeved father wrote.

However, when the DMK patriarch talks about rights, one must realise he has been having those famous dark shades on for decades and can hardly distinguish between rights and wrongs. A treasure of compassion, as his name ‘Karunanidhi’ suggests, the Tamil leader is temporarily blinded by the fatherly love, so much so that the noted litterateur, who is known for his love for poet Thiruvalluvar who wrote on ethics, is now quoting jurists to support his lament for denial of bail to his daughter. Karunanidhi has quoted the likes of advocate Ram Jethmalani, the devil’s natural choice who now represents his daughter Kani, and former Tamil Nadu DGP V Lakshminarayanan, who was raised to the post by none other than the former TN chief minister himself, in his support.

What Karunanidhi obviously wouldn’t have mentioned in his piece in Murasoli are the reasons special judge OP Saini gave while turning down Kani’s bail plea on November 3. “In this case, where the stakes are high and the powerful can easily tamper with evidence and threaten witnesses, the accused need to be kept in jail till the bulk of the hearing is over… The facts and circumstances of the case itself suggest that the witnesses would be under a lot of pressure, given the serious consequences of the case for the parties. This is further compounded by the fact that the witnesses are employees, relatives, family members, colleagues and subordinates of the accused persons.”

What Karunanidhi wouldn’t have also mentioned in his piece is the curious case of Sadiq Batcha who committed suicide on March 16. Batcha, a key aide of former telecom minister Andimuthu Raja, was the managing director of Green House Promoters Private Limited. Batcha hailed from Raja’s native town Perambalur and was also allegedly the jailed minister’s business associate. A Kaliaperumal, Raja’s elder brother, was the joint MD of Green House Promoters. The company was floated months after Raja became a union minister in 1999.

Kalaignar needs to be told that the future of Indian democracy cannot be threatened by the denial of bail to his jailed daughter; more so, since it was not threatened by the biggest scam in the country’s history in which his own men and family played a pivotal role. The very dark shades which served for years as blinkers when his enormous family made equally enormous wealth should now help him stash away his tears. His fatherly lamentation has few takers in public.