THE storm after the deceptive lull. Just when the telecom scam seemed to have been erased from public memory, the CBI raids on the houses of former communications minister Sukh Ram in Delhi and Himachal Pradesh last week—and the seizure of Rs 3.61 crore in cash and gold worth lakhs—have jolted the nation awake. And demonstrated that the heavily-politicised agency can bite when it wants to.
To be sure, the crackdown had little to do with the telecom scam which had stalled parliamentary proceedings for two full weeks last year and almost saw the minister put in his papers. The raids had more to do with the purchase of Multi-Access Rural Radio (MARR) systems. But unwittingly the last brought the first back into focus.
The CBI booked Sukh Ram and Runu Ghosh, director (finance) in the Department of Telecommunication (DoT), under the Prevention of Corruption Act. The charge: for the "pecuniary advantage" (CBI chief Joginder Singh's words) of Rs 1.68 crore, the minister and his bureaucrat conspired to purchase 200 MARR sets at inflated prices from Advance Radio Masts (ARM), a little-known Hyderabad company run by Patalu Rama Rao. Only last year, Rao had been appointed head of the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Development Corporation by the late NTR. Rama Rao, of course, denies the CBI charge. "There was no hera pheri (bungling) in the deal," he asserted over the weekend. His firm, he says, had quoted the lowest price of Rs 3.8 lakh per system in response to a 1992-93 tender floated by DoT. The department, he claimed, had made a counter offer of Rs 3.4 lakh each and asked ARM to supply 300 systems. Another company had been given a contract for 200 systems.
The CBI investigations revealed that DoT had decided to procure 500 MARR sets in 1993-94. A committee was accordingly set up to select the best system available at the most affordable price. But Sukh Ram allegedly put his foot down and altered the committee's recommendations in favour of ARM's bid.
Rama Rao denies that ARM was shown any special consideration by DoT, although FIR registered by the CBI details the alleged favours given by DoT to Rao. CBI insiders claim that the original information regard ing the irregularity came from "a source" Stunning details came to light when information was investigated further.
Since the registration of the case August 8, till the raids on August 16, the whole operation was kept a well-guarded secret. Sukh Ram was out of the country and Runu Ghosh was shocked to see the CBI sleuths at her house.
Only after the completion of the swift and successful raids did the CBI director decide to brief the press. Smarting under snub received from the Supreme Court for hobnobbing with politicians under CBI scrutiny, he tried to dispel the notion that he held particular briefs for any politician, although he did not say whether Sukh Ram would be arrested on his return to India. Meanwhile, investigators are probing Rao's business and political connections—especially his career graph which rose dramatically after his statemate P.V. Narasimha Rao became prime minister in 1991.
The CBI plans to ask Rama Rao three things:whether he had any business links with Narasimha Rao's son, Prabhakar Rao; who helped him get the contract for the supply of the MARR systems; and who introduced him to the communications minister, if at all he was introduced to him?
When the CBI conducted the raids, they had no idea they would stumble upon such a huge amount of cash. In all, the sleuths recovered Rs 2.45 crore from Sukh Ram's Safdarjang Lane house in the capital and Rs 1.16 crore from his Mandi residence in Himachal Pradesh. The agency has also iden-tified lockers belonging to Sukh Ram, but they are yet to be broken.
From the raid on Runu Ghosh's house, the CBI recovered about one kilo gold worth Rs 10.26 lakh, foreign currency worth Rs 1 lakh and Rs 1.32 lakh in hard cash. Investigators said that since foreign exchange was also recovered from Ghosh's house, she could come under the purview of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. Ghosh allegedly played a key role in finalising the deal. She was interrogated for several hours before being arrested on August 17.
What last week's raids achieved was to swing the spotlight firmly onto the telecom scam once again. Last August, Himachal Futuristic Communications (HFCL) bid a whopping Rs 85,000 crore and emerged the highest bidder in nine telephone circles. Sukh Ram's announcement that a bidder would be allowed only three circles was seen as a coup de grace for the HFCL plot. His stand was vindicated when the Supreme Court upheld the three-circle cap, but the CBI raids could open a fresh kettle of fish.
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