Abhishek Verma always prided himself on his connections in the police and the CBI. But on Friday, June 23, his antennae failed to receive any signal that trouble was afoot. So when a CBI team drove into 8, Empire Estate, Verma’s residence off the Mehrauli-Gurgaon road outside Delhi, he was caught off guard. It was still the wee hours of the morning and Verma was woken up as CBI officials searched his residence, seized financial statements, telephone records, documents, computers and laptops. Similar raids were conducted simultaneously at his office in Gurgaon and the office of Sushil Bageriya, Verma’s chartered accountant, at Manish Plaza on Ansari Road in Delhi’s Daryaganj.
For the CBI, which was handed over the case a year after the war room leak was first detected, it has been a frustrating experience. Many of the trails had already gone cold. But the June 23 raid and the investigations that preceded it had helped the agency achieve one significant breakthrough. Senior officials in the CBI told Outlook that they have found definite links between Abhishek Verma, his associates and the French manufacturer of the Scorpene submarine, Thales.
In fact, it is known to the CBI that Jean-Paul Perrier, the CEO of Thales, was hosted by Verma in January this year at the latter’s farmhouse. There have also been repeated contacts between the two over the telephone and e-mail. Sources say that the business links between the two and Verma’s other dealings will now be the focus of the investigations. The agency is also looking at the links between Verma and the Chinese telecom giant ZTE Corporation through which his company was given a $1.2 billion joint venture last year.
Verma, left, seen with Parashar, right, at a party
The CBI now has a fair idea of Verma’s network in the navy. It has established his links to eight officers—Commodore A.K. Patnaik, presently posted as commanding officer of INS Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in Calcutta, Lieutenant Commander S.S. Dhiman and Commanders S.M. Hanchinal from the diving directorate, H.S. Bageria, A.K. Pandey, staff officer of the controller of logistics, B.B.S. Jamwal, posted on INS Rajput as the logistics officer and B.K. Swain and S.S. Rathore of the procurement department.
The CBI also raided Lieutenant Colonel S.S. Chaudhry and Major Devender Sharma as well as R.S. Dudani, P.S. Mehra and H.L. Bhatia, all posted as undersecretaries in the defence ministry. All the officials, say CBI officers, were linked to procurements at some stage and are suspected to have maintained links with Verma’s associates, Ravi Shankaran and Parashar.
The June 23 raids were a follow-up to the April 6 arrest of Kulbhushan Parashar, a key accused in the case. It was Parashar’s pen drive, recovered from the residence of Wing Commander Sambhaji L. Surve by air force intelligence, that first led to the suspicion that secrets were being leaked from the directorate of naval operations. CBI sources told Outlook that the agency has now homed in on the company that supplied the pen drives to Parashar. There were eight pen drives purchased in his name but seven cannot be traced.
Other than Verma, the CBI is also investigating his friend and associate Ravi Shankaran. Crucial information has been sourced from raids conducted on the office of Manish Vora, a chartered accountant in Goregaon, Mumbai. Vora used to handle Shankaran’s accounts in India and abroad. The CBI is also looking at a Mauritius-based company that Shankaran was regularly in touch with. It helped him with his offshore banking transactions.
Besides Shanx Oceaneering, a company owned by Shankaran, the CBI is also investigating a number of companies that he had floated along with Parashar. These are Expert Systems Pvt Ltd, Basic Pvt Ltd, Kelvin Engineering Pvt Ltd, Unitech Systems Pvt Ltd and Interspiro India Pvt Ltd. The CBI has also asked for the call records of cellphone numbers—9899190152, 9869030093 and 9811203003—which were used by Shankaran and his associates and could have changed hands subsequently.
Sources say that Shankaran left India on November 10 last year, on a six-month Schengen visa that allows him to travel in all European Union countries. CBI officials established contact with his relatives in London at 0044-20897729007, where he was suspected to have stayed before being declared a proclaimed offender. Now, sources say, he is likely to seek asylum in the UK on the grounds that the war room leak case against him is "politically motivated". The CBI plans to file a chargesheet early next week in the war room leak case. It will name Shankaran and Parashar, the main accused along with Mukesh Bajaj, Wing Commander S.L. Surve and Commanders Vijendra Rana and V.K. Jha.
