Last week, the noose seemed to be tightening around Rai, who had quit the Government in 1994 after details of the sugar scandal became public. The CBI filed chargesheets against Rai, his personal assistant S.P. Rai, B.B. Sharan Singh, his assistant Sanjay Singh, and Sabu Chako who has long been under investigation for alleged links with Dawood Ibrahim.
Just who are these shadowy characters of the Bombay underworld, whose patronage extended thus far? Police investigations have established that the main persons involved in the JJ Hospital shootout included known Dawood men—Subhash Thakur, Jayendra Thakur alias Bhai Thakur, Shyam Kishore Garihapatti, Chandrakant Anna Patil and Paresh Mohanlal Desai.
The evening after the shootout, states the CBI chargesheet, the accused had a convenient shelter at hand. A suite had been taken at the Bombay Suburban State Electricity Supply Undertaking(BSES) guesthouse at Pali Hill, booked under the name of S.P. Rai, then additional private secretary to Kalp Nath Rai, who was then minister of state for power. According to the chargesheet, "some of the accused persons stayed at the guesthouse with V.N. Rai (Kalp Nath Rai's nephew)". V.N. Rai, says the CBI, "was involved in several heinous crimes, including the shootout".
What is more serious is that when the Delhi Police intercepted a Toyota in East Delhi's Gagan Vihar on July 23, 1993 the car's occupants turned out to be the main suspects of the hospital shootout, with strong connections with Dawood. When
their flat in Kalkaji was raided, a bundle of documents was found, the most incriminating of which was an envelope addressed to Mohammed Farooq, hawala racketeer and close associate of Dawood, care of Sabu Chako. Later investigations revealed that Farooq and his wife were given shelter under aliases by Chako at Hotel Hans Plaza, and the bills were paid by East West Airlines.
The men arrested in the Toyota and others—including Mansoor and Sunil Sawant—stayed at the BJP MP's 25, Meenabagh flat whenever they visited Delhi, and "were in regular telephonic contact with Dawood" on Sharan Singh's telephone number. The CBI has established that Sanjay Singh (who is absconding) took Subhash Thakur and Sunil Sawant to Kalp Nath Rai's house on November 27, 1992.
According to the CBI, it did not end there. "S.P. Rai phoned up I.R. Kidwai, senior manager of the NTPC, to book accommodation for one B.N. Rai, a guest of Kalp Nath Rai" at the NTPC's transit camp in Delhi's Safadarjung Development Area. Soon enough, "another room was booked in the transit camp from July 27, '92 to August 4, '92 for Subhash Singh in the name of Subhash Rai".
When the matter was taken up by transit camp authorities with S.P. Rai, he told them "to treat the guests as official guests of the corporation and advised them not to charge anything".
While non-bailable warrants have been issued against Rai and Sharan Singh by the additional sessions judge S. N. Dhingra at Delhi, Rai is suddenly not so brazen. On February 8, he issued a statement saying he had "been framed". "I have great faith in our legal system and time will prove that I was the victim of nefarious designs to tarnish my image on the eve of Lok Sabha polls," was Rai's statement. He claimed that S.P. Rai was in charge of looking after his constituents from Ghosi and part of that work was to get gue-stroom reservations. "I have never given any instructions to give any guesthouse accommodation to the alleged associates of Dawood Ibrahim," the former minister has pointed out. On February 10, Rai's counsel, I.U. Khan, said the former minister would surrender before the designated TADA court two days later. That will, of course, only mark the beginning of Rai's long legal battle ahead.
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