St Kitts: despite dirt, Chandraswami walks

Reacting to the verdict, the godman said: 8216;8216;I am happy that the way V P Singh tried to drag in Rajiv Gandhi8217;s name did not work. I am more happy for Rajiv. Truth has triumphed.8217;8217;

V P Singh, who was in Mumbai, said a committee should be appointed to evaluate wheter a CBI case can stand in a court of law or not. 8216;8216;It will ensure that money and time is not wasted,8217;8217; he said. According to Singh, he stood vindicated as handwriting experts had told the trial court that his son8217;s and his signatures were 8216;8216;forged8217;8217;.

Chandraswami8217;s acquittal by Special Judge Dinesh Dayal today flies in the face of the evidence adduced against him in court by V P Singh, Arif Mohammed Khan, Raj Babbar and diplomat Suresh Chander Gupta.

The 23-page judgement acknowledges that when Gupta met the prime minister of St Kitts in October 1989 in connection with the case, the latter had on his own brought up the subject of Chandraswami.

8216;8216;The Prime Minister of St Kitts asked him as to who was Chandraswami and what post he was holding with the Government of India. Gupta replied that to the best of his knowledge Chandraswami was not holding any post with the Government of India.8217;8217;

But the court declined to see this, to say the least, curious enquiry about Chandraswami as an evidence of the godman8217;s involvement in the forgery conspiracy.

Giving him the benefit of doubt, the court said the reference to him 8216;8216;does not show that Chandrawami was in any manner instrumental in arranging the fictitious document8230;The question posed by Prime Minister of St Kitts may or may not have been related to this transaction. He may have heard of Chandraswami in any context8217;8217;.

Similarly, the court made light of the evidence of blackmailing given against Chandraswami by Arif Mohammed Khan, Raj Babbar and V P Singh. The judgement quoted Khan8217;s deposition that Chandraswami had contacted him at the time and showed him a printed paper purporting to be of a St Kitts bank account in the name of Ajeya Singh. Then it quoted Babbar8217;s deposition that Chandraswami had told him that 8216;8216;V P Singh was not an honest person8217;8217;. Finally, the judgement quoted V P Singh8217;s acknowledgment that Khan had told him about his conversation with Chandraswami, and that even so he had 8216;8216;refused8217;8217; to meet the godman.

But the court dismissed their depositions in one line, saying: 8216;8216;The evidence thus only shows that at that particular time, Chandraswami did not think highly of V P Singh.8217;8217;

Another important reason the judgement gives for Chandraswami8217;s acquittal is the premature death of deputy director in the Enforcement Directorate A P Nandey, who had been assigned the task of verifying the bank account allegations, that first appeared against V P Singh in The Arab Times. Nandey died before the CBI filed a chargesheet in 1996 against Chandraswami, his secretary K N Agarwal, former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao and former Union minister K K Tewari.

Subsequently, Rao and Tewari were discharged while Agarwal passed away.