NGO questions Govt & pharma firms but when it comes to itself, has no answers

For, an investigation by The Indian Express in Mumbai, New Delhi, Bhilai and Chandigarh, shows that the NGO’s antecedents are dubious. And every one involved with its petition is now distancing themselves from it. Citing reasons as bizarre as: ‘‘My wife was ill so I signed without reading the papers,’’ to ‘‘I am now with the Government, how can I criticise the (Government)?’’

Adar Destitute and Old Age Home raised questions and eyebrows when it shot off a complaint to SEBI the week before Biocon went public—Biocon’s market cap today is Rs 5,281 crore—alleging that the firm was flouting Government rules to sell its insulin drug. It filed a PIL in the SC in February and it surfaced once again last month just when Biocon was ready to launch its insulin drug.

The Government has cleared the two companies and said that the lapse, if any, was purely procedural. The problem lay in the confusion over guidelines issued.

This is what The Indian Express investigation revealed:

• An affidavit in the PIL, signed by ‘‘trustee’’ Preet Maju, says the NGO was registered, under the Bombay Public Trusts Act 1950, on March 7 2003 ‘‘with the object of caring for old people and destitutes.’’

But according to the registration department of the Charity Commissioner in Mumbai, there is no NGO registered by this name on the said date.

• The PIL mentions a Mumbai address for the NGO. The Indian Express found that this address belongs to an 11th floor flat in Lokhandavala Complex. The flat had a name plate saying Col L S Gill. On ringing the bell, a message was sent through a househelp that the residents do not know anybody by the name of Preet Maju or the NGO.

• The PIL mentions Preet Maju, 48, described as ‘‘regularly engaged in the activities of locating, identifying, feeding and caring for old and destitute persons in Mumbai’’.

The Indian Express tracked her down in Bhilai where she is employed as a teacher at a local school. Her husband, S. Maju, an employee of the Bhilai Steel Plant, said he wasn’t aware of the ‘‘activities of the NGO registered in Mumbai.’’

He said she was not home as her father had passed away in Chandigarh. Since he refused to disclose her address, The Indian Express traced her whereabouts through crematorium records in Mohali. Contacted at their residence, Maju’s brother Sukhjivan Singh said: ‘‘She is not here and I don’t know where she is.’’

• Next stop: the E C Agrawala law firm in Delhi that has taken up the PIL and says it has signed up leading lawyers Harish Salve and Abhishek Singhvi. ‘‘It is a public cause,’’ said Rishi Agarwala of the firm. ‘‘We do not check the antecedents of our clients. The cause is more important.’’ Asked who hired them, he said it was one of the NGO’s ‘‘patrons,’’ a Mumbai-based lawyer called B A Desai.

• Desai, when contacted by The Indian Express, promptly distanced himself from the PIL. A former Minister of State in Maharashtra and ex-president of the Congress ‘‘state human rights cell,’’ Desai recently took over as Additional Solicitor General, western region.

‘‘Aadar asked me to be patron so I agreed, but I never attended their meetings,’’ says Desai. Asked about the PIL, he said: ‘‘I am now additional solicitor general. How can I speak against the government?’’

• The Delhi law firm says that Singhvi and Salve are not charging any fees for this PIL but Singhvi, when contacted, said: ‘‘I am going to send them my bills.’’ Asked about the antecedents of the NGO, Singhvi said: ‘‘We only deal with the advocate on record, in this case Agrawala. We have nothing to do with the client.’’

• To add another twist to the tale, Desai is former president of Mumbai-based Federation of Environment and Development Organisations (FEDO), another NGO that dashed off complaints to the Government last week similar to the ones in the PIL.

• Says FEDO’s coordinator N D Dandawate: ‘‘My wife was sick, so I signed letters without reading them properly. I know nothing about Aadar.’’

(with Sourav Sanyal and Vikas Kahol in Chandigarh)