Crime: Manu Sharma; Wanton Ways

Manu Sharma's mean streak flowed from his family's business empire and immense political clout. This is evident from the feudal way he ran his sugar mill in Karnal.

Life came easy. Too easy. Access to a business empire in his teens. Swanky Mercedes and Tata Safaris. Foreign holidays. Personal security officers. Directorship of a sugar mill at 20. A .22 pistol at 24. And the perpetual boast-"Don't you know I'm a relative of former President Shankar Dayal Sharma?"

It was a make-believe world. The only world Manu Sharma knew. Right from childhood, father Venod Sharma concedes, he was paid extra attention because he was asthmatic. Perhaps a bit spoilt too. After graduation, when he expressed his desire to get into business instead of doing an MBA, papa asked him to manage the sugar mill.

A new life began 150 km away from home, at Bhadson in Karnal where the sugar mill is located and to his pad in Kurukshetra. Away from his father who was the only person he seemed to be scared of.

Sugar cane farmers whose dues have not been paid for months

Yet, he carried some of his father's traits with him. Especially when it came to making payments. Says a contractor who had been associated with the Sharmas: "I made the mistake of asking for my dues and I was told 'which hand are you asking the money with-left or right?'" What was left unsaid was that a sound thrashing would follow. Rs 1 lakh was not a small amount and the contractor had to approach his relative-a senior judge-to help him retrieve his money. Dubbing it as false, Sharma says his political detractors are spreading stories.

But the farmers around the sugar mill tell similar stories of clout and connections. They know that the mill came up in 1995 with the help of then chief minister Bhajan Lal. They also know that governments in Haryana may have changed, but the Sharmas' clout and contacts remain intact. Sharma's rise to power started in 1976 when he became the Chandigarh Youth Congress president. In two years, he graduated to the Centre as the general secretary of the All India Youth Congress.

Coming to terms with a side of his son he didn't know existed, Sharma says with tears in his eyes, "I didn't know his friends. They never came home. I didn't even know he had a gun licence till the incident happened."

When he allegedly shot Jessica Lall, it was not the first time that Manu had brandished his pistol. He had been using it to terrorise the farmers of the area. Like when they sat on a dharna outside the mill to demand the Rs 25,000 that was due to cane grower Suminder Singh. "Manu always hung around with 20 to 30 youths who brandished motorcycle chains and iron rods. When I asked for my payment, one of them asked me to come and collect it," says Singh. He was taken into a room where Manu, surrounded by body guards, threatened him with the .22 and beat him up so badly that the gash in his head needed stitches.

Like Suminder Singh, there are scores of sugarcane farmers who have been left clutching unpaid bills running into lakhs of rupees. In December last year, the farmers gathered their wits and filed a civil suit against the Haryana Government in the high court. This followed after 16 villages were suddenly assigned to Manu's Piccadily Agro Industries Ltd, making it compulsory for them to sell their produce to Sharma's mill. They went to court because they were confident that rules had indeed been bent to accommodate the Sharmas. Before villages are reassigned, it is customary that the matter be placed on the agenda of the state Sugar Control Board, which was not done. Neither was data presented on the mill's sugarcane requirement, the distance between the villages and the mill and the transport facilities. Nor did the government pass an order on the transfer of the villages. Additional Cane Commissioner Baljit Singh, in a reply to the court, gave the plea that it was what the villagers wanted.

What the villagers want is quite another story. "Manu's managers always told us that they could get whatever they wanted. They constantly reminded us that they knew how to wield the stick," says Gurnam Singh, showing bills worth Rs 60,000, unpaid since February. "It's possible that some payments have not been made because of our recent problems, otherwise all dues were being cleared within a fortnight," says Sharma. But the farmers insist Manu's style was different.

That there was a lot about Manu he didn't know is a realisation dawning on Sharma only now, the .22 pistol being the most serious. He did know that Manu-who had always been a vegetarian and a teetotaller-had started drinking of late. "But then he was an adult and he never came home drunk." Perhaps that's why Manu seldom came home to Chandigarh. Their contact was restricted to brief meetings in Delhi whenever Sharma visited the capital to oversee a five-star hotel coming up in Janakpuri. "But look how life changes in just a minute," he says ruefully.

As Sharma recuperates and comes to terms with the personal crisis, his brother and partner Shyam Sunder manages the family empire-hotels in Chandigarh, Manali, Raipur, a construction company, an ayurvedic college in Chandigarh and two sugar mills. "I want to go and meet Jessica Lall's family," says Sharma. A feeling that may not necessarily be reciprocated. Life has changed for the Lalls and the Sharmas. It's definitely not easy.

VIKAS YADAV
One Step Ahead

For 20 days following the murder of former model Jessica Lall at the Tamarind Court restaurant, the Delhi Police searched every conceivable location in its hunt for Vikas Yadav, the fugitive son of Rajya Sabha member D.P. Yadav and a friend of main accused Manu Sharma. But on May 19, to everyone's surprise, Vikas swaggered into Delhi Police Headquarters with supporters and friends to "surrender". Only, he was armed with an anticipatory bail, granted by Sudhir Singh, sessions judge, Manipur (East), on May 15. Earlier, he had tried unsuccessfully to get bail from Mumbai and Calcutta.

Says Joint Commissioner Amod Kanth who is monitoring the case: "We cannot dishonour the court's orders. But we can question the jurisdiction of a court in Manipur giving bail in a case in Delhi." A stunned police listened to Vikas' story for two hours, allowed him to address the media and then let him off. But as Kanth says, "We will get him legally."

Vikas claims he never went to the Tamarind Court, owned by socialite Bina Ramani, where Manu allegedly shot dead Jessica. "Manu came to my bungalow at about 2.30 a.m. Since my father was away in Lucknow, I allowed him to spend the night. But the next morning when I read that Jessica had been shot dead, I asked him to leave," he says. So why was he on the run? Vikas told the police that he was scared of being arrested since his name figured in the case. Besides, his lawyers and friends had given him conflicting advice. "In the end I decided to hand myself over."

However, the police say that three days before his surrender, in an interview published in a Hindi daily, Vikas had claimed that he went to the party on his own and when the shooting occurred, left without finding out what actually happened.The police add that they now have witnesses' statements to prove that Vikas had accompanied Manu and the two Coke executives, Amrinder Gill and Alok Khanna, to the Tamarind Court. In their confession statements too, the three have maintained that Vikas was with them all along and that before leaving for the Tamarind Court they had had drinks at Gill's house at Friends Colony. Such confessions before the police are not tenable in a court of law and they need to be backed by independent witnesses. The police also plan to put Vikas through a lie-detector test.

A murder case is pending against Vikas in Ghaziabad since 1991. Vikas, only 14 then, was accused of killing a fellow student. While four others were arrested in the case, Vikas fled. Only when the four were bailed out six to seven months after the incident did he surrender. In the 20 days that he was on the run, Vikas had enough time to work out his story. The police now have to build evidence and disprove it.

-Sayantan Chakravarty