Dipke, Saurav Das in the Dock: The Paper Trail They Must Explain

Amit Tiwari has taken an interest in two men: Abhijeet Dipke and Saurav Das. One concerns himself with Dipke's education and scholarship. The other has led him to a rented house in Greater Kailash and the rather less glamorous world of rent agreements, landlords and taxes.

There is nothing particularly heroic about checking a rent agreement. Nor is there anything romantic about examining a university register. But in the present climate of Indian politics, where accusation travels faster than evidence, a man who actually looks at documents begins to seem almost eccentric.

Tiwari's method is refreshingly simple. He digs out a paper, follows a transaction and asks a question. Then he files a complaint and waits for somebody in authority to answer it. His quarry, besides Dipke and Das, has included Gurpreet Singh, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, Sikh for Justice (SFJ) and the organisation referred to as CJP.

The Dipke affair ought to be easy enough to settle. Did Abhijeet Dipke study at the university he says he attended? Was he enrolled there? Was there a scholarship? How much was it worth? What did it cover?

There is no mystery here. The university has records. Dipke has records. Let them be produced.

If the records establish Dipke's claim, Tiwari must swallow his words. If they do not, Dipke must explain himself. That is how civilised societies settle disputes. They do not require a shouting match, a television studio or a thousand angry posts on X.

The Das affair is even more delightfully mundane. It is about a house in Greater Kailash and a rent agreement. Who owns it? Who rented it? In whose name? What was the rent? Who paid it? Were the taxes paid? Was the arrangement legal?

A rent agreement has one great virtue. It does not care whether you are a nationalist, socialist, secularist or a member of the local residents' association. It merely records what was agreed.

This is where Tiwari's campaign becomes interesting. He is dragging political allegations out of the realm of rhetoric and into the dreary but dependable world of paperwork. A balance sheet has no ideology. A university register does not vote. A tax return does not attend a political rally.

They merely tell you what happened. Or, sometimes, what did not happen.

But Tiwari should be careful. The man who makes documents his weapon must accept documents as his judge. He cannot demand that Dipke prove everything while his own conclusions are accepted on trust.

The standard must be the same for everybody.

With Gurpatwant Singh Pannun and Sikh for Justice, the stakes become considerably higher. Questions about a university degree or a house are one thing. Questions involving separatism, foreign funding, terrorist activity and international networks are quite another.

Here suspicion is not enough.

If there is money, follow it. If there are companies, examine them. If there are criminal cases, read the court records. If there are links between organisations, establish them. If the evidence warrants state action, let the state act.

A man cannot become a terrorist merely because someone calls him one often enough.

Nor does an allegation become harmless because it is politically inconvenient.

The same caution applies to Gurpreet Singh and the claims about companies and criminal proceedings discussed by Tiwari. Such matters are too serious to be settled by innuendo. They belong to the police file, the company register and, where necessary, the courtroom.

And this brings us to the curious place occupied by Amit Tiwari in this story.

Why is an activist digging into university records, rent agreements, company registrations, GST questions and foreign corporate structures?

Where are the people whose job it is to do this?

Where is the taxman? Where is the regulator? Where are the investigating agencies? Why must an ordinary citizen become Sherlock Holmes while the official machinery waits for the newspaper headlines?

There is something admirable about Tiwari's persistence. There is also something faintly alarming about a democracy that increasingly relies on persistent individuals to discover what institutions ought to have discovered themselves.

But there is another danger. The amateur detective can become so enamoured of his quarry that every footprint begins to look like evidence of a conspiracy.

Indian public life is full of such transformations. A missing document becomes a fraud. A foreign connection becomes a plot. A company becomes a secret network. A political association becomes treason.

Soon everyone is guilty, and evidence becomes an afterthought.

Tiwari must resist that temptation.

His best weapon is not the word traitor. It is the document.

Let Dipke produce his university records. Let Das produce his property and rent papers. Let the claims concerning Gurpreet Singh be tested against court records. Let the allegations concerning Pannun and SFJ be examined through financial and investigative evidence.

And let Tiwari put his own evidence on the table.

That would make for a much more interesting contest.

If Tiwari is right, the papers will establish it. If he is wrong, the papers will expose him.

Either way, nobody has to take his word for it.

That is the beauty of paperwork. It is a wonderfully impartial witness. It has no party membership, no caste, no ideology and no appetite for television fame.

It simply lies there, usually ignored, until somebody bothers to read it.

And when it finally speaks, even the loudest man in the room has to listen.