The Hindu Business Line : <I>Judicial deal </I>

Forget the civil nuclear deal! Let us go immediately for a judicial deal with the US, under which all political VVIPs in India charged with crimes of various kinds — from murder, rape and kidnapping at one end, to embezzlement, tax evasion and disproportionate assets at the other — will be transported to the US to stand trial there and, if convicted, do time in US jails.

Just savour some mouth-watering tidbits about the US justice system: You are handcuffed the moment you are charged or convicted. Trials are swift. The jury's finding on fact is final, except on grounds of misdirection or mala fides. Conviction for serious crimes leads to sentences of 100-200 years. The US Justice Department Table shows duration of sentences for major crimes to be 20-25 years on an average — that is longer than the sentence provided in India for murder.

A complicated case involving the CEO (Kenneth Lay) and the Chief Financial Officer (Jeffrey Skilling) of a company of the size and market worth of Enron gets disposed of in four months with both of them convicted of a total of 29 criminal counts. Had Lay not died of a heart attack following the verdict, he might have been sent to prison for 165 years. Likewise, Skilling faces a maximum sentence of 185 years.

Just last week, a person convicted of child pornography and operating obscene Web sites was sentenced to 150 years!

Damages and fines too run into hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, the death of Lay is not going to save his property from confiscation for paying close to $200 million in fines. A similar fate confronts Skilling as well. Jury awards of damages of the order of $1 million to $5 million in accident cases are usual.

The prison administration also is stringent with no consideration for rank or status. Jail is jail, and not a home away from home, as in India. You now understand why a judicial deal with the US to cleanse our politics should take precedence over the nuclear deal?

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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