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The Eeler’s Ace Catch

London nabs war room leak accused Ravi Shankaran. Will the CBI move on it now?

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The Eeler’s Ace Catch
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Some four years after he gave Indian law the slip, the Metropolitan Police, London, finally caught up with Ravi Shankaran, an  accused in the navy war room leak case, on April 21. Shankaran, a former navy diver, is also the nephew of the wife of the former chief of naval staff, Admiral Arun Prakash, and is believed to be a key link in a case that continues to raise several disturbing questions.

The navy war room leak case was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) following a series of reports published in Outlook since January 2006. While Indian Air Force intelligence had detected the leak of crucial secrets relating to future acquisitions worth billions of dollars from the navy’s operations directorate in May 2005, the government kept the investigation under wraps for almost nine months. In this time, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) was brought in to “investigate” the case, a first in the history of the intelligence-gathering organisation. Since, the IB is not a prosecuting agency, getting it to investigate a case also makes the government’s true intentions suspicious.

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Navy seal The Scorpene deal being signed on October 6, 2005

Not only this, Shankaran continued to lead a charmed life through the investigations by the navy and the IB. Sample these glaring lapses in the case so far:

  • It is known that Shankaran spent considerable time at the official residence of Adml Prakash during his tenure as naval chief. Phone records accessed by the IB show that calls were made from the navy chief’s personal and direct telephone (011-23792905) to the cellphone (9811203003) of arms dealer and co-accused Kulbhushan Parashar. At best, they were made by Shankaran; at worst, by Adml Prakash. But the CBI ignored this and other facts when it began its investigations a full 10 months after the leak was detected.
  • The Board of Inquiry (BoI) constituted by the navy fails to mention Shankaran in its findings. The only civilian referred to in the BoI report is Parashar, a colleague and business partner of Shankaran. Both were in the navy and had quit to get into business. Initially, Parashar worked with Shankaran but subsequently started separate companies of his own.
  • Shankaran was in touch with several senior naval officials even as the BoI was constituted. However, none of the officers connected to the BoI and contacted by Shankaran, such as Captain Jason Thomas, were ever questioned by the CBI or the IB.
  • The phone calls from Adml Prakash’s residence to Parashar and the series of calls from Shankaran to the then navy chief’s residence have never been brought on record or mentioned in any of the four chargesheets the CBI has filed so far.
  • The BoI’s findings recommending action against the three naval officials were forwarded to the Union ministry of defence in September 2005. If the BoI was convinced that the three naval officials were guilty, why was the case not handed over to the CBI for action against Shankaran?
  • A month later, in October 2005, when the three naval officials were dismissed from service without a trial, the navy stated that the “appropriate authority” would take “action against the civilians”. Which meant that if the three naval officers were “guilty” of leaking secrets, then those who received those secrets were equally “guilty”. But once again, no move was made to question, detain or arrest Shankaran. Instead, 13 days after the dismissals, Shankaran quietly left the country on November 11, 2005, never to return. Even the IB, which mans the immigration counters at all Indian international airports, never issued a lookout notice; nor did any agency seek to confiscate Shankaran’s passport. Armed with a valid Schengen visa valid for 15 European countries, Shankaran managed to slip away.

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Strangely, the navy avoided a general court martial when the leak surfaced. Had it done so, the three accused serving naval officials would have had a chance to defend themselves. In an ongoing petition being heard by the armed forces tribunal, one of the dismissed officers, Commander V.K. Jha, has alleged that the then naval chief Arun Prakash had a malafide intention in not allowing a general court martial. His lawyer, Commodore Sukhjinder Singh, told Outlook that while Jha was “tortured and we have the medical papers to show for it, we also believe that there was malafide on part of the then naval chief”.

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All this begs the following questions. Did the navy avoid a court martial to aid Shankaran’s escape from India even as the three naval officers were victimised? Were the initial investigations conducted to protect the powerful? Adml Prakash never offered to resign as the navy chief even when the name of his wife’s nephew first surfaced. He did so only in August 2005, when The Indian Express reported that Shankaran’s name had surfaced. Ironically, all the evidence that the CBI will now use to extradite Shankaran from the UK was available then as well. It was just that what the navy chose to ignore then has now become vital evidence for the CBI’s case against Shankaran.

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Strangely enough, while the CBI is planning to get Shankaran extradited, the progress has been tardy at best. Sources in the Indian High Commission in London told Outlook that the court of the City of Westminster’s Magistrate has already given the CBI two opportunities to present its case. The bureau failed to respond on both occasions. A third date has now been set for June 28, when the case will come up for hearing. In all, the court gives a foreign government only 60 days from the date of arrest to make its case for extradition. If the CBI fails to make its case within this period, Shankaran will walk free once again.

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Sources also said that Shankaran has hired some of the best lawyers in London to oppose the extradition. He has appealed that the case is one of political vendetta by the Indian government and, therefore, the court ought to dismiss the CBI’s appeal.

Shankaran also appeared in court on May 19 for the “commencement of the extradition hearing” when he was remanded “on conditional bail”. According to agency reports, Shankaran will be confined to his residence under police guard, in keeping with British laws. In response to a query on whether the court had given two dates for the Indian government to respond, CBI’s official spokesperson Harsh Bhal told Outlook that “we have not been able to find any information in this regard”. Their ignorance is bliss for Shankaran, it seems.

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