Central Bureau of Incompetence?

Sukh Ram, of course, is no stranger to stories many find unbelievable. When the CBI raided his farm and some residences in Himachal Pradesh following the huge recovery of cash at his official residence, they found his diaries with notings like `HF’ — at that point, the investigators believed this stood for fledgling telecom firm Himachal Futuristic Communications Limited (HFCL) which Sukh Ram had helped in the past. In addition, there were various figures ending with the letter `l’ — investigators believed this stood for `lakh’, as in rupees.

Sukh Ram, however, turned the entire argument on its head, saying the entries were really just his expenses for running his orchard. `HF’ was the name of one of his servants, Fontaine, who was from Himachal; the figures ending with `l’ were details of the number of litres of milk his cows gave; other initials stood for some complex fertiliser used for his orchard!

The reason why HFCL was linked with Sukh Ram goes back to the opening up of the telecom sector to private players in the mid-90s. While most firms bid aggressively for various telecom circles across the country, the most aggressive was the (then) Rs 96-crore HFCL which promised to pay upwards of Rs 85,000 crore as license fees over a 15-year period for nine telecom circles. HFCL emerged as the winner in five circles — now, according to the rules, if HFCL was not able to pay this money, it would have to forfeit Rs 175 crore of bank guarantees it had given. And given that HFCL was a really small company, the chances of it being able to raise the kind of money it needed for the investment was next to non-existent. In which case, it is reasonably certain they would have had to forfeit their money — the company, it must be added, has always maintained, however, that it would have been able to generate the funds.

After the bids came in, however, Sukh Ram decided that no company would be allowed to get more than three circles — thanks to this, HFCL’s exposure got curtailed dramatically. The policy of putting a cap also helped to make HFCL’s joint venture Fascel the front-runner for the Gujarat/Maharashtra cellular circle as the US West-BPL combine now had to give up one of the circles it was the highest bidder for.

The CBI, however, for reasons best known to it, didn’t even bother to investigate the events that led up to Sukh Ram changing the tender conditions after the bids had been accepted. Nor in the event, did they quiz him on how his decision had helped one firm escape paying Rs 175 crore.

Instead, it chose to concentrate on a much smaller case — that Sukh Ram had abused his office to help the Hyderabad-based telecom firm ARM get a `pecuniary advantage’ of Rs 1.68 crore. Now, clearly, the CBI’s home work wasn’t as tight as they thought it was. For, on Tuesday, the Delhi High Court discharged Sukh Ram, his co-accused Runu Ghosh of the DoT, and P. Rama Rao who owns ARM. Justice R.S. Sodhi said that the CBI had provided no evidence to support its allegation that Sukh Ram had helped Rama Rao. According to the CBI, Sukh Ram had over-ruled the recommendation of his ministry’s price negotiation committee to reduce the price paid to ARM. The CBI, however, was not able to prove that Sukh Ram had not done this for bona fide reasons. And that’s why the case collapsed.Now it is possible that the CBI may still be able to nail Sukh Ram on the `disproportionate assets’ case. But surely it speaks very poorly of their ability to put together an investigation, that one of their main cases is not able to hold water at the High Court level. Which means one of two things. Either, the CBI is just incompetent. Or, that it had a great case, but deliberately blew it (on political or other considerations). Either way, it speaks very poorly of the organisation.

What makes it worse is that the Sukh Ram case was one of the more high-profile ones the CBI was tackling. And since they were dealing with a serving minister at the time, surely this august body should have made more than certain they’d got all their facts correct, and their arguments marshalled well.

This, sadly, is not the only high-profile case that the CBI seems to be letting slip away. For all the truckloads of documents that the CBI made such a big thing of while investigating the Bihar fodder scam over the last few years, for instance, its case really centers around Laloo Prasad Yadav’s `disproportionate wealth’ — basically, that he’s got property worth more than his legal earnings. Now the point is that the `disproportionate wealth’ case was cracked by the income tax department. So, what evidence has the CBI got apart from this, and the reports by the Comptroller & Auditor General on the scam?

So, don’t be surprised when, a few years from now, Laloo Prasad Yadav is also acquitted by the courts. Like Sukh Ram, he too will then proclaim that he was a `victim of conspiracies’, for bringing about `socio-economic and radical changes’. If there’s anyone that will be responsible for this, it’ll be the CBI.

The courts have acquitted Sukh Ram in one of the corruption cases against him — thanks largely to the CBI’s poor case-work