While the main drama was enacted in Beijing, the provincial capitals had their own units and sub-units that were given almost Zero scripts and commanded to develop them into full fledged plays and playlets. Since their resemblance with the real life happenings was o surrealistic, an average citizen thought that the plays were not mere enactments of imaginary episodes that might happen in real life. Thus both the Hi-Fi communists and commoners enjoyed their enactment in equal measure. Enacting robbery and murder was not a taboo and they looked more authentic on stage than on the real life stage.

The Greek tragedy that was a kind of peep into the future was taken more seriously than in Shakespeare’s days when he had his character say that this world was a stage andwe human beings mere actors who came on stage played our parts and disappeared. How ittle did an average Chinese citizen know the real drama unfolding in the private life of the wife of an influencial senior Communist party leader who was heading to be a member of the most powerful decision making body in Beijing.

HI FI LADY BO

May I just mention that as per the Chinese tradition, a woman does not change her surname on getting married and does not adopt the family name of her husband. I have just mentioned the word Lady Bo to keep our readers in good humour and no such title exists in real life. In the episode of national importance that I am just going to unfold, the emerging influential Communist party official was named Bo Xilai and it was taken for granted that he would make a debut on the Beijing central stage sooner than later and be as powerful as powerful an individual in Red China can be.

Thus, his word was taken as seriously as the law of the land. While Bo Xilai was rising higher and higher in the political firmament, his wife, Gu Kailai, 53, a practising Barrister, was amassing as much wealth in the house and various bank accounts controlled by her as possible. Gu Kailai, like anyother mortal, fell for the luxury of having a foreign bank account where she could stash the ill-gotten wealth in the new emerging economy of the new super power, People’s Republic of China. In this illegal  transaction of laundering foreign exchange, she was helped by an English businessman and an old China hand of repute, Neil Heyward. Indeed, he did it for a price and was paid promptly.

Bo Gwagwa,24, the young son of the powerful BOs, a Harvard university graduate from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, is said to have facilitated his mother’s foreign transactions and also business of imports and exports of artefacts and rare Chinese antiques. After sometime the clever Englishman claimed that the young man of the BO family owed him 22 million US dollars and, it is said, that once he restrained the movement of BO Gwagwa on the Harvard university campus. It means that the script was getting curiouser and curiouser. It was at this stage that the 53-year old mother and a practising attorney decided to intervene in an unlawful manner. Perhaps she went a bit too far and relied on her egal acumen and her husband’s political clout a bit too much.

Gu Kalai invited Neil Hayward to a private party in a suburban villa where footsteps of the Jingchha or the Chinese police fell not. The unsuspecting English businessman was wined and dined beyond his capacity, drugged like a lord and when his senses deserted him, he was bumped off by an aide of the lady. , the Chinese police intervened discreetly and had the big boss’s wife cleared of any suspicious and illegal deal. There were other state officials who bent backwards to have the influential legal luminary cleared of all suspected charges. As things started unfolding on the diplomatic cocktail circuit, a whispering campaign was launched by the adversary camp that did not wish to see Bo Xilai sitting comfortably on the almost highest rung of the ladder. The friends were busy in defence of BO family but the Foe was equally busy attacking the defensive citade that they eventually demolished.

Bo Xilai was disgraced and his wife, Gu Kailai was put behind bars pending investigation in depth. The Embassies of the powerful western nations located in Beijing, the Chinese capital, went on an overdrive as one of their kith and kin had been murdered in broad daylight in the modern age China. The central government of the People’s Republic of China was equally keen to have the case investigated in depth to have China’s criminal justice system cleared as an impartial one where Law Was Above All.

JUSTICE IN FAST TRACK

The criminal justice system went into an overdrive to prove its impartiality. The accused was summoned before the judge in the first week of August 2012 and the case was decided by middle of the month. Gu Kailai, once the most feared and dreaded soul east of the Suez, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. It was, however, a suspended sentence of death, a rare phenomenon in jurisprudence of China encoded from the Imperial days. In the non-legal language it means that the convict will not be hanged for the next two years. Thereafter the case will be reviewed and if the conduct of the convict in the previous two years was good, he or she will not go to the gallows. The death sentence will be automatically converted into Imprisonment for Life.

The unique provision of suspended death sentence was given a place in the modern Chinese jurisprudence by no less a person than Chairman Mao Dzedong himself. Mao was of the firm opinion that “anyone can be educated and reformed” and was, therefore, against hurrying the process of death sentence. The period of two years for watching the conduct of the convict was taken from the jurisprudence of the Imperial China and is now enshrined in the statute book of the Communist China.