Operation Black Sea: Jogi finds himself out of depth

PM’s reply to Jogi was made public after his security advisor Brajesh Mishra met Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani and Director IB K.P. Singh. The CBI has been asked to look into the forgery and ‘‘take appropriate action against the person or persons connected with the forgery.’’

According to sources, Jogi earlier wanted Congress leader Sonia Gandhi to release the document. However, when he failed to convince her, he went ahead and did it on his own.

It is understood that Jogi wanted Sonia to believe that his political adversary V.C. Shukla had manoeuvered the IB to produce a report questioning his financial integrity.

The document in question, ostensibly a ‘‘Top Secret/Confidential’’ paper of the IB, giving details of Operation Black Sea launched by its ‘‘Special Directorate’’ about property and assets acquired by Jogi and his family, was released by him at a press conference yesterday. He also released the letter he wrote to the PM. However, the letter and the document, were faxed to the PMO only after they were released to the media.

PM, in his reply to Jogi, iterated that the IB does not have a Special Directorate, and also it had not launched any operation codenamed Black Sea. The word ‘‘not’’ was in bold and underlined for effect.

Meanwhile, regarding the document, sources said only the naive could believe that it was authentic. Not only was the forged document replete with grammatical errors, it was classified as both ‘‘Top Secret/Confidential.’’ As per standard official procedures, government documents are either classified as Top Secret or Confidential.