Paranjoy
Loose Pages
Court Cases That Could Have Shaken India

About the Book

This is the story that needs to be told.

Loose Pages has a phenomenal cast of characters: a chief minister found hanging from a noose inside his official residence, a former President, several serving or retired chief justices of the country’s highest court, some of the country’s best-known businesspersons, well-recognised faces from the bureaucracy, the media and the higher judiciary. It also includes some of the most important and influential persons in India, past and present: the Prime Minister, besides chief ministers, members of Parliament and political personalities of varying ideological hues.

Tying the tales together are hard disks, emails, diaries and many ‘loose’ sheets we had access to.

Many of these sheets of paper and diary entries were recovered from the offices and premises of people associated with two of India’s prominent business conglomerates—the Aditya Birla Group and the Sahara India Pariwar—after ‘search-and-seizure’ raids were conducted by officers of law enforcement agencies.

The Sahara-Birla papers could have culminated in one of the most sensational scandals of contemporary India. But it did not.

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Loose Pages: The Trailer

The Authors

Sourya Majumder is an independent researcher and activist associated with Krantikari Naujawan Sabha. Having completed his bachelor’s degree in sociology from Hindu College, University of Delhi, he is currently pursuing a master’s in sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

 

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta is a journalist and author with work experience spanning more than four decades, cutting across different media: print, radio, television and documentary cinema. He served as editor of the Economic and Political Weekly between April 2016 and July 2107. He is currently a consultant with Newsclick.

 

Praise for the Book

Loose Pages is a rough guide to Indian democracy – or what ails it. The book shows how easily the political class, their crony capitalists, top investigators, and even the courts, can ignore the obvious. The book presents a mountain of documentary proof for readers to figure out if it really amounts to what the court termed as “zero evidence.” There is nothing new about businessmen bribing politicians but Loose Pages shows that the degree of their audacity is simply breathtaking.

Vipul Mudgal
Director, Common Cause

This book… is an absolutely fascinating account which will be important for every person who wants to understand not only the state of corruption in the country but also the manner in which courts deal with such cases and the conflicts of interest that are involved. This is a book which is highly relevant for our contemporary times since it sheds important and fascinating light on some of the most powerful players in the country… I would recommend this book to every citizen who is concerned about the state of our institutions and the future of India.

Prashant Bhushan
Advocate, Supreme Court of India

This book is undoubtedly a well-researched one… It clearly manifests a situation where the citizenry has to wake up and be counted. It provides ample material for such awakening and is a “must read.”

Dinesh Dwivedi
Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India

Loose Pages is essentially an excellent work of investigative journalism that adds another chapter to the story of India’s age of crony capitalism…In uncovering every aspect of this unsavoury set of findings what Sourya Majumder and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta have really done is to show (yet again) the rotten insides of India’s state machinery – of a dysfunctional government which is incapable or unwilling to act against crony capitalism.

Alok Prasanna Kumar
Advocate and Columnist

 

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