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Mr. Ahuja and Mr. Polanski - and Mr. Letterman also

It's not incorrect to relate them is it???

The common thread being 'rape.'

What do you think about Shiny being accused of raping his maid? I think, plainly, the maid is trying to take advantage of her 'star' boss: a simple case of blackmail.

Mr. Letterman was smart enough not to give in to some blackmailer - although, there's no rape involved in his case.

People of France are rather tolerant about these matters. So, Mr. Polanski gets a patient ear on the continent.

He seems to have been caught in some game of global geopolitics. First, America forced the Swiss bankers to reveal to Uncle Sam about the folks who had 'secret' Swiss bank accounts. I am sure if the Indian government were to make a similar request, they would be swiftly rebuffed.

By the way, whatever happened to all that talk that about Indians having Swiss bank accounts which was happening around the time of the last national election? Now that the elections are over, everyone has conveniently forgotten about it. Of course, that was only to be expected. Probably, every bureaucrat worth his or her salt and every politician has got a secret Swiss bank account. So, any scheme to unearth these secret stuff would damage everyone's reputation. So, better to push the whole thing under the carpet as long as possible.

The case of Mr. Polanski and his 30-year-old case is rather curious. It's difficult to say with any amount of certainty what would be the right course of action to take in this case. Should one forgive and forget? Well, if it was a 'normal' case, of course, everybody would say 'No.' But, just because the accused in this case is a major movie director, should the wheels of justice move differently? Clearly, people should not get different treatment because of who they are.

So, at a simple level, it seems easy to say that Mr. Polanski should be punished just like any other defendant would be.

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