Indicting Goliath by Lal Bhatia – Book Review

Book – Indicting Goliath
Author – Lal Bhatia
Publisher – Notion Press
First Published – 2018
Pages – 286
Who should read – Indians and US and the World citizens concerned about the problem of corruption and violations of human rights and injustice

Indicting Goliath is not a tall tale; it’s just a simple narration by a person who has suffered into the hands of self-glorifying state called the United States of America. This is the story of Lal Bhatia, an Indian who has seen the worst days in the USA – falsely accused, persecuted, tortured and victimised by the FBI, Department of Justice and then indirectly ordered to quit the USA even after the establishment of facts that whatever he was saying was right – there has been a case of money laundering which went well above one billion US $! Can you believe it? Lal Bhatia, the author of Indicting Goliath, has been made to suffer just because he wanted to let the US government know about an ongoing scam? He was denied justice because he tried to hit where it hurts – the unholy collusion of corrupts and crooks…

Indicting Goliath takes the readers to various facets of time – right from the beginning to the present days. From the inception of BCCI, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International to the day before yesterday (metaphorically, meaning present), Indicting Goliath mentions each and every detail that one would need to understand what the issues are. Lal Bhatia, the author, wants his readers to understand how badly he was tortured and how unfairly he was persecuted by the FBI and the Department of Justice, USA, respectively. He wants to let the readers understand that all he wanted to do was to expose the money laundering done by BCCI which he calls Bank of Crooks and Criminals International in his book for many reasons that one can easily understand by reading this book.

In a nutshell:
Lal Bhatia was lured into working with BCCI. BCCI wanted to syphon funds from various sources and then launder the collected funds by various means and all these were to go unmonitored because they had their ‘contacts’. Lal Bhatia writes:

“Akbar informed Wig that BCCI was not an ordinary bank. It was designed to avoid any centralized regulatory review and operated extensively in bank secrecy jurisdictions, thus handling Wig’s large volume cash deposits was BCCI’s specialty and preference.”

He names the crooks who landed him into all this and made him the scapegoat while they keep enjoying the privileges that the cronies usually get (even in India are many like those). When Lal tried to go public with all the details he had, he was rather forced, tortured and made to suffer a lot so that he could take the blame and ‘accept his guilt which he did not. He ‘invented’ different ways and collected all he had to prove his ‘innocence’ and establish the real connections which could clear the dust off the big picture of corruption which was later accepted by the Federal Judges as well. But as it stands, Lal Bhatia has still many questions to ask of the USA – will he get the justice that he deserves? Will the culprits, the real ones, get punished? Will Lal be able to live with his family as normal people do?

Why should you (rather MUST) read this book?
What I liked the most in this book, Indicting Goliath, is the thing that it could keep my interest alive even without being a fiction. Artistically, Mr Bhatia has done a great job as a first-time writer. On the other hand, the content of the book is so intense, cinematic and troublesome – you will feel for him as a fellow Indian. How could a country like America do this to an innocent person? You will also have many questions left to be answered and it becomes natural to expect the US to clear the air off it. How deep is the corruption – we often talk about our county India and other countries in the world. THE US, however, seems more unjust than all others when one goes through this book. Are all the human rights things sham? Convicted or not, vindicated or not, guilty or not, a prisoner cannot be treated that bad, Uncle Sam!

After you read this book:
Once you finish Indicting Goliath, you must wonder about Lal Bhatia and where he is now. Well. he is fighting his battle alone, still. You can find him on Twitter and connect to him – https://twitter.com/fightinginjustice/

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review by Alok Mishra