No soft-pedalling, CBI may file regular case

Instead of going for the softer option of a Preliminary Enquiry into the Anti-Material Rifles deal with South African arms manufacturer Dene...

Instead of going for the softer option of a Preliminary Enquiry into the Anti-Material Rifles deal with South African arms manufacturer Denel during the NDA regime, the CBI may register a regular case. An FIR against 8216;8216;unknown persons8217;8217; of the Ministry of Defence MoD and Denel is likely to be registered in the next few days.

Currently, the agency8217;s legal experts are looking into the matter. The CBI has already received a detailed 15-page note on the MoD8217;s purchases and negotiations with the South African firm. Interestingly, in the case of purchase of Anti-Material Rifles, the MoD has indicated that the then defence minister George Fernandes first marked some queries on the file and then approved the contract.

Last month, South African media reports indicated that Denel agents paid Rs 20 crore as commission for getting the Price Negotiation Committee papers of the MoD. The MoD has not given names of the members of the PNC to the CBI, but only indicated designations of the officials who sat in the meetings.

The CBI has also been informed by the MoD that there was some shortfall in the performance of the Anti-Material Rifles, including in its range and signals, and despite that, further supplies were received from Denel without any modification in the General Staff Qualitative Requirement GSQR.

The MoD has also pointed out that substantial supplies of the rifles were received after Operation Vijay ended. The note contains details of negotiations carried out by Denel for selling three variants of 155 mm guns, and how they had failed trials for the towed version.

Earlier, sources say, CBI bosses were going in for a PE. In that case, it wouldn8217;t have been filed in court. Incidentally, in the Bofors case, the PE had been converted into a regular case after two years. CBI bosses point out that as the filing of a Letter Rogatory in Denel case seems imminent, the registration of a regular case would be better. CBI Director U.S. Mishra will have the final word on this.

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More