Abhishek Manu Singhvi is one of the most important leaders of Indian National Congress and the senior advocate in Supreme Court of India. Presently, he is a Member of the Parliament of India representing Rajasthan in the Rajya Sabha. Today he resigned from the post of the spokesperson of the Congress party and also from the post of Chairperson of the standing committee on law and justice. You would have seen him on news channels, almost daily, supporting his Government’s policies and criticizing the opposition parties. But now a days, he is going through the worst period of his political and legal career.
Someone (probably his ex-driver) has released a sex tape released where he was allegedly seen having sex with a senior female lawyer. Meanwhile, the Delhi High Court has restrained the media from publishing, telecasting and broadcasting the contents of the sex tape. Abhishek Manu Singhvi has claimed that such a CD either does not exist or if it does, it is clearly and obviously morphed, fabricated and forged. The Congress Party has also declared that the CD was a personal matter of the senior lawyer and the party has nothing to do with it.
But as we all know, this is information age and it is almost impossible to hide anything from the world wide web. Not surprisingly, the CD is available on many torrent sites and social networks such as Facebook, YouTube etc. Now, Mr. Singhvi is blaming social media sites for sensationalism and claimed an organised gang was involved in broadcasting CD contents despite a court injunction. But it looks like that he is not aware of the power of internet. No Court, no Government, almost nothing can prevent his CD getting viral on social networks. Had there been no Social Media, I suspect this issue would have been buried under the filthy carpet of bureaucracy and intricacies of legal system.
Till now, the Indian media has treated the matter rather insipidly, with brief mentions in third or fourth pages. Now the question arises why the media is silent on this issue? Not a single article came on NDTV regarding this issue in last one week. Is it a desperate bid to cover up reality and truth? What if the CD had involved a BJP leader? The court had only restrained airing of the CD and not the reporting of the incident and the episode itself. Yet, much of the media including NDTV, Time of India are totally blank on this issue. The same media made big hue and cry when the BJP’s MLAs were caught in Assembly, watching porn. The English media yelled in one voice and said “Hypocrisy of the right wing group” and now one of the senior leaders of Congress has almost allegedly created porn material and that too in SC chamber and no “news” at all from this media. What a double standard it is!
One more thing, I would like to add here that it is very difficult to morph people on video. According to experts, if one has to do a convincing morph so that one takes a fake face or fake image for real, it is as good as a graphics project for a Hollywood film. I don’t think that kind of morphing which involves, frame-by-frame graphical work, is possible in India. If the CD is morphed as Sinhavi is claiming, why should he resign? He should stand up and defend his honor rather than resigning and running away.
I still remember, a few months back Mr. Singhvi responded to the Karnataka MLAs porngate story with the comment: “This is the real chaal, charitra & chehra of BJP”. Now Mr. Singhvi can you please explain your charitra in this whole episode?