Link The Dots, Get A Picture

While the court's intervention has ensured that the number of the phone used by Abhishek has been officially recorded, it remains to be seen if the CBI will actively pursue the latest lead. The probing agency has a record of being lethargic when it comes to following up on crucial evidence thrown up in the war room leak case. Consider this:

• The metropolitan court had asked the CBI to file its inquiry report on the allegation against Abhishek that he had misused a five-hour parole granted to visit his ailing mother to make several international and local calls. The CBI was to have filed its report on February 5 but it is still pending. According to CBI sources, the agency has not even sought the data from the cellphone towers near Abhishek's farmhouse which could have helped them track calls made or received by him during those five hours. Incidentally, Abhishek's lawyers managed to obtain the parole by citing an older Enforcement Directorate case, in which he faces penalties amounting to Rs 70 crore.
  
  
• In its raids on Abhishek's farmhouse last year, the CBI recovered three cellphone SIM cards purchased abroad, including one from Switzerland. However, till today little or no effort has been made to procure the call details. This when these could have played a critical role in establishing Abhishek's international links, as well as his connections with influential politicians in India.
  
  
• Abhishek's business card describing him as a co-founder of Atlas Defence Systems also lists a satellite phone number. The CBI has made no efforts to seek its call details although the phone was in use between November 2004 and July 2005 when the defence secrets were being leaked.
  
  
• Since the war room leak case is one involving "national security", the CBI should have used technical experts to try and investigate all communication channels used by Abhishek and his associates. Instead, it has merely replicated the same information that had been recovered by Air Force Intelligence, which, incidentally, was the first agency to stumble upon classified documents being leaked from the naval war room. If the CBI did not come up with any substantial new evidence, why did it waste so much time in first registering the fir and then conducting raids and letting key suspects including Ravi Shankaran, the nephew of the wife of then naval staff Admiral Arun Prakash, travel abroad?