"Yes, Rao was under investigation in the St Kitts case," says the former chief of the CBI’s Special Investigation Group (SIG), N.K. Singh. "His name figures prominently in the FIR and the charges were very serious,’’ says the man who headed the probe till he was controversially packed off to the BSF.
The SIG was set up by the National Front government to probe sensitive cases like Bofors, HDW, Airbus, phone-tapping and Chandraswami’s letter-forgery case. The St Kitts probe came to a virtual halt with N.K. Singh’s removal. Why was he removed? "Partly because of the phone-tapping case, in which Chandra Shekhar could not back up his charges, but mainly because of St Kitts, where I had registered the FIR and was very close to fil-ing the chargesheets. Had I been allowed to do so, things may have been very different,’’ says Singh, who served two tenures in the CBI, first from 1972 to 1980 when he investigated the Kissa Kursi Ka Case, and later for about a year beginning 1990.
As the FIR revealed, the Rajiv Gandhi government’s attempt to indict V.P. Singh didn’t stop at enlisting Chandraswami’s help. The then Indian high commissioner in Trinidad and Tobago, Shiv Kumar, under whose jurisdiction St Kitts fell, admitted he was pressurised by Rao, then external affairs minister, and the then Indian consul-general in New York to help "Chandraswami’s efforts to get documentary evidence against V.P. Singh’’. Kumar said he had received a call from Kailashnath Agrawal alias Mamaji, who claimed to be Rao’s family friend.
"I am really surprised the St Kitts probe is taking so long. When I was removed, it was at a crucial stage," adds Singh. On hawala, Singh says S.K. Jain’s oral statement that he paid off Rao should be investigated in its entirety.
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