Manu Sharma has once again managed to make a complete mockery of the India criminal justice system and the government of Delhi, which approved his parole on completely spurious grounds, even overruling the recommendation of the Delhi police, has been left with egg on its face.

Manu Sharma, serving a life sentence after having been convicted of the murder of Jessical Lall, applied for parole to attend to his ailing mother and to perform the last rites of his deceased grandmother. Apparently, the Delhi police recommended to the government that Manu's parole request be declined. Yet the Delhi government went ahead and let Manu out. Last week Manu was found partying at some of the hotspots in Delhi, had a tiff with the son of the Delhi's police chief and his girlfriend, who promptly summoned the police and the media got the story. Manu Sharma's mom was found to be hale and hearty and his grandmother has been dead for many months. The reasons for the parole were all sham.

This episode once again proves how easy it is for the powerful and the well connected to bend the rules and getaway with murder. A man serving a life sentence for a cold blooded murder (ironically at a late night party), gets out on parole on flimsy grounds, goes partying and picks up a fight with a girl in a bar. This time fortunately there was no shooting and the police acted swiftly as their boss' son was involved.

How and why did this happen?

Manu Sharma's father Venod Sharma is a politician in Haryana. He is also Mr. Money Bags, who it seems helped the Congress party purchase half a dozen MLA's to retain power after it fell short of a simple majority. The quid pro quo was that the Chandigarh police will endorse Manu's application for parole and the Congress government in Delhi will release him from the jail. This is exactly how Manu managed to circumvent the law.

One is again hearing of a process failure in allowing Manu parole. Every process is destined to fail if the process owners themselves are hell bent on bending the rules. Manu's lawyer the indefatigable Ram Jethmalani is defending all this as 'life as usual' for Manu on parole. Afterall Manu is not expected to hang out with his mother all the time and a rich young man like him needs to party!. I personally believe Mr. Jethmalani has gone completely senile.

While mercifully Manu Sharma is back in the Tihar, where he honestly and truly belongs, the government of Delhi and its chief minister Shiela Dikshit have managed to sully her reputation. Yet there seems to be no contrition on her part instead there seems to be a brazenness, an arrogance, borne out of more than a decade in power. There is also an element of protecting one of their own. Manu Sharma and his family belong to the political class, which closes ranks with everyone else when it comes to protecting and shielding their own. No wonder even the normally shrill opposition has also not made an issue out of this naked abuse of power. Afterall, at some basic level the interests of all politicians come together and protecting their children from the long arms of the law is certainly one of those things.

The only way for the civil society to keep the politicians in check is to keep their ears and eyes open and let the media raise a stink. If we do this often enough, the venal and the wily politician will realize he can not get away with breaking the rules.