Raja 038; Company

But what was even more impressive than his over 59 per cent vote share in the election,was the run-up to itthe swiftness with which Raja climbed up in an organisation where experience mattered,unless,of course,you belonged to the Karunanidhi family.

As the district secretary of the Dr Ambedkar Thinkers Forum,secretary of the Rationalist Forum and of the Tamil Ilakkiya Peravai literary movement,Raja worked assiduously to build his image. At the time of the election,the young and ambitious Raja,the eighth child of Andimuthu and Chinnapillai from Velur village,had established himself as a lawyer of the local court. He functioned from an office at a narrow crossroad near the old bus stand in a building owned by a doctor,C Krishnamurthy.

Krishnamurthy,a second-generation medical practitioner,hailed from Coimbatore in western Tamil Nadu. His family shifted to Perambalur years ago when his father Dr P M Chinnappan set up a clinic here. Considered a gifted doctor,Chinnappans clinic established itself in the area over the years.

Krishnamurthy and Raja were close,which apparently benefited the doctor enough to make him leave a reasonably successful medical practice to plunge into business. His first business was sand quarryinga tightly-controlled operation in Tamil Nadu,where to get a licence almost always requires you know someone in authority. Krishnamurthy next ventured into granite quarrying,yet another lucrative,controlled business,before branching out. He then dabbled in finance,opened petrol bunks and,most importantly,got into the real-estate business.

Around the time Raja lost the general election in 1998 when a BJP-led government briefly came to power at the Centre,and won as the MP again in 1999,a small-time businessman with interest in real estate,A M Sadhick Batcha,came in touch with him. If Krishnamurthy was a professional,Batcha was a man of trade,having steadily worked his way up over the years.

Old-timers in Perambalur remember Batcha as a small-time textile merchant from Pallippatti village near Karur. Batcha would make the rounds of houses in Perambalur,selling saris and cloth for shirts and trousers under an easy installment scheme. Later,he tried his hands at a chit-fund business but didnt do too well. He then devoted himself full-time to brokering land dealssomething he had been doing on the side till then.

Meanwhile,Rajas political career grew dramatically,mainly due to his proximity to the late DMK stalwart,Murasoli Maran. His being an educated Dalit helped in building his image. He was made an MoS for Rural Development for 11 months till September 2000 in the NDA government in which the DMK was an ally,and then the Health Minister till his party cut its ties with the coalition.

In 2004,incidentally soon after Raja was re-elected to Parliament and made the Union Minister for Environment and Forests,Batcha floated a real estate firm named Green House Promoters. He appointed himself managing director but the firms board of directors was filled with Rajas relatives. Rajas lawyer-wife M A Parameswari was the director,legal she resigned recently; his eldest sister Vijayambals son R P Paramesh Kumar was joint managing director; his elder brother,A Kaliaperumal,and another nephew,R Ramganesh,were both directors. Batchas wife S Reha Banu was on the board too and his brother A M Jamal Mohamed was the executive director.

What marked Green House Promoters amongst the numerous newcomers in the real estate business was the exponential growth it recorded in the last few years. The firm that reportedly started out with a capital of Rs 1 lakh,went on to record a turnover of several hundred crores.

Soon,Batcha launched another company,Equaas Estates Private Limited. The board of this firm too had Rajas wife Parameswari as a director and nephew Paramesh Kumar as the joint managing director. In the first year of its operations,Equaas Estates reported an even bigger turnover than Green Housealleged to be the funneling of scam money from the controversial spectrum sale in which Raja,then the Union telecom minister,allegedly played a key role.

These companies and individuals bought up large tracts of land across the regionand allegedly around the country,and even abroad. One of the most profitable deals was buying up 600 acres of prime agricultural land from 160 people,including 60 Dalits of Naranamangalam village nearby who were allegedly intimidated into selling their property at a pittance. Much of it was sold to MRF to set up a plant that is under construction now for a rate several times more than what the farmers were given.

With Batcha operating from his office in Chennai,the ground operations at Perambalur were handled by his men,including brothers Jamal and Jaffer,agents like Subbudu alias Subramanian,Selvaraj,Senthilmurugan,David Karthikeyan and Dinesh. They floated firms and projects like Sadhick Real Estate,Aashil Real Estate,Green City,etc.

By this time,Krishnamurthy,Rajas doctor friend,had shifted back to Coimbatore,setting up a real estate firm called Kovai Shelters India Private Limited. Rajas nephew and two nieces reportedly have shares in this company as well.

While the fortunes of Rajas men were growing rapidly,the first major crisis broke out in July 2009,when Justice R Regupathi of the Madras High Court complained that Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry Bar Council Chairman R K Chandramohan used Rajas name to influence the outcome of an anticipatory bail petition filed by a father-son duo charged of forging marks at Pondicherry University.

The judge revealed that Chandramohan met him at the chamber,wanting him to speak to a union minister who was holding at the other end of the call to request him to consider the bail petition favourably.

The petitioners were Rajas friend Dr Krishnamurthy and his son Kriba Sridhar,a medical college student. Chandramohan was an old friend of Rajas from Perambalur who was elected as the Bar Council chairman with Rajas help. Raja even denied knowing the doctor when the controversy broke out.

It was later revealed that the partner-turned-whistleblower in the marks scam in Pondicherry University,a staff member named V Jayaraman,was brutally beaten to death. The CBI is investigating the case after a direction by the High Court,but the probe has not moved much,beyond a few initial arrests.

Even after a series of allegations against Raja and those perceived to be close to him broke out in the public,they continued to wield tremendous power in the region. The first breach in their clout was made by the events that followed the CAG report which put a figure to the till-then ambiguous entity called the spectrum scam.

The first round of raids covered Rajas ancestral house in Velur and Batchas house and offices in Perambalur and Chennai,but critics called it an eye-wash. However,the second round of raids on Wednesday surprised even the cynics,as Rajas brothers Kaliaperumal and Ramachandran,Batchas brothers Jamal and Jaffer,Krishnamurthy,local land sharks Subbudu,David,Dinesh and many others were grilled by officials for nearly seven hours.

The raids have given a shot in the arm to Rajas opponents in his hometown who are now bringing together all those who have been affected by the land deals brokered by Rajas clique in the last few years. Residents talk about various dealsa 300-acre plot here,a 500 acre there and over a thousand acres at yet another place. Local tea shops are abuzz with a possible third round of raids and this time,they say,the list could include state government employees,DMK men and bank employees.

The threat to the empire of Raja and his men finally seems real.