National

Gifts From Admiral Uncle

The navy chief's relative is wanted in the war room leak case. Can the CBI dig him out?

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Gifts From Admiral Uncle
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Shankaran quit the navy as a Lt Commander and went into business bagging naval contracts. And as his business grew, so did his social stature. A regular member of the United Services Club in Colaba, Shankaran started setting his sights much higher. That is when one party animal met another through a set of common friends. Enter Abhishek Verma, another man who shared the same "social interests" as Shankaran, one of them being a fascination for blonde women.

Both started spending considerable amount of time together at parties in exotic locales. In fact, Shankaran was a regular at party circuits in Mumbai as well as Delhi. According to sources, a relaxed Shankaran was in Mauritius where Verma joined him for the New Year’s eve this year. According to them both left for Dubai on January 6 and Shankaran returned to London soon after.

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But the last eight months has seen Shankaran’s party come to an end as he hit the naval war room leak sandbank and his status changed from that of a charming jet-setter to a proclaimed offender. Today the CBI is hunting for him across continents and some in the agency feel that he could have sneaked into the South of France from Britain.

Enquiries made by CBI with Shankaran’s relatives in London have failed to yield any information about his whereabouts. But the agency is convinced that Shankaran is a key figure in cracking the war room leak case. The CBI is also in possession of the taped conversation between Outlook and Shankaran where he confirms the role of middlemen in the Scorpene deal. Many feel he will return after October 31, when his uncle, navy chief Arun Prakash retires, but others say that Shankaran will continue to elude the long arm of the law as long as he can.

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