Reading autobiographical books is certainly not a big fun compared to reading novels or even poetry for that sake. However, there are the autobiographical literary pieces which keep the readers’ head down on the pages (each of them)… such books are, though, rare in numbers but when you find one, you seldom let the reading opportunity go away. And the same, I will say, I have experienced recently. I have read, as told earlier, Lal Bhatia’s debut work and his autobiographical account on his life in the USA – Indicting Goliath.
Indicting Goliath has two parts – one goes to the history, background and a texture introduction and the second part goes to Lal Bhatia’s own story: how was he falsely indicted, vehemently tortured and illegally imprisoned with an absolute zero in the terms of prisoner human rights.
The book tries to expose the unholy nexus or a nefarious design that exists against the protagonist, Lal Bhatia. The nexus contains Lal’s relatives, Manhoman Wig, his colleagues, a few corrupt federal judges in the Justice Department, a few corrupt personnel in the FBI and a few others. All of them cover up a high-end money laundering criminal conspiracy of almost 1 billion dollars and the USA authorities do nothing about it… that sounds pretty strange, doesn’t it?
Indicting Goliath has been written with dedication and an alert pair of eyes for factual consistency and proofs. The author has added an appendix with all the legal documents which a reader might be interested in knowing because such allegations against the judges and the FBI cannot be tossed without any legal backing. All this further complicates the case because we all know the USA for being the oldest democracy (and the powerful too). Can it act in such dubious way against an individual who is but trying to expose the corrupts?
Lal Bhatia’s book is very interesting despite being a rough nonfiction. It has the details which make it thrilling and enticing. Yes, the first part might be a little draggy because of the details which some readers might not find interesting – but that all is to make the readers understand how did the money laundering flourish in those days of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.
You can get a copy of this amazing autobiography from Amazon India and learn about the Indian who fought back from within the prison to get justice and still continues to do so. Justice is not only getting out of jail for him but to drag the real criminals to the bar… can he do it?
review by Atul for The Best Books