Skeletons in the cupboard

But the dual action has not prevented a trail of old and apparently muddled investigations from re-surfacing. On January 29, the CBI filed a case of criminal conspiracy against “unknown” officers of the Delhi zone for allegedly forging and planting a document in the office of a Delhi-based jeweller, Subhash Barjatya. Later, on February 18, the new director, Indrajit Khanna, discovered that files of two other cases — involving FERA violations allegedly committed by Zee TV and former Congress party president Sitaram Kesri — hadgone missing.

The controversy surrounding the three cases may be the tip of the iceberg as the Department of Revenue, it now transpires, had been flooded by complaints and counter-complaints by Bezbaruah and Aggarwal on the handling of several other cases. And as an internal Finance Ministry note reveals, the butt of Bezbaruah’s attack against Aggarwal had been his “mishandling” of the following three cases:

Jain was at that point vying for a ticket from one of the Delhi constituencies and his visit to the ED office had got wide publicity in the Press. He (Aggarwal) had thus failed to take due care in politically sensitive matters and acted with “extraneous” factors in mind.

The ministry’s note confirms that prior to Aggarwal’s ignominious exit from Lok Nayak Bhavan, Bezbaruah had repeatedly asked the Department of Revenue to repatriate him, perceiving him as a “security risk”. It also acknowledges the fact that Aggarwal had, in turn, levelled serious allegations against Bezbaruah and that the ministry felt there were serious “inter-personal” differences between the two.

A perusal of the sheaf of complaints that Aggarwal had submitted to the Revenue Secretary shows that he had felt that as head of the Delhi zone, he was being stymied while handling several sensitive cases. Aggarwal’s letters — written between July and November 1998 — deal with the following cases:

“Such delays provide ample time to the accused for tampering with evidence…,” Aggarwal has written.

`Time will tell who’s right’

When contacted, former ED chief M.K. Bezbaruah said that now that he had left the organisation, he was not in a position to comment on individual FERA cases that had been investigated. “But all details are with the Finance Ministry and some action has already been initiated by them. Time will tell who was inthe right. I refuse to comment further,” he commented.

When confronted with Aggarwal’s allegations about interference and not being allowed to pursue trails of cases abroad, Bezbaruah said that since certain complaints had been made by him against officials heading the Delhi Zone, he did not think it fit for their teams to pursue investigations abroad. “Once I had approached the Finance Ministry, certain allegations were being verified by them. In such a scenario, it did not seem appropriate to send teams abroad.”

He also said that it would not be appropriate to say that complaints and counter-complaints had been made by him and the former head of the ED’s Delhi unit (Ashok Aggarwal) since the officer in question was far junior to him in seniority and rank.