Chances are, till this newspaper reported it yesterday, you'd never even heard of Olga Kozireva of Uzbekistan. And why should you, considering she's just one of the thousands of inmates of Tihar jail, arrested for smuggling around 80,000 yards of Chinese silk at the Indira Gandhi International Airport last September. But hear her story, and you'll want to meet her. To hear just how corrupt the Indian customs are, and how organised smuggling syndicates are allowed to flourish, for a fee. Naturally, an inquiry has been announced, but given the fact that it's already been around three months, and the investigation fairly simple, it does seem (again, naturally) that a massive cover-up will take place, and the guilty officials allowed to flourish. Of course, since justice must be seen to be done, the officials will be transferred, free to practice their trade at other spots. Indeed, after an irate Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha's personal intervention, a large number of officials at the airport have been transferred. Such is Sinha's clout, of course, that the officers were not suspended, pending the results of the investigation which would prove them guilty or innocent. But I'm running ahead of my story. When Olga was picked up, walking out of the green channel at the airport with 27 rolls of Chinese silk worth Rs 1.55 crore as her unaccompanied baggage, this was her 23rd trip to India in the previous three months or so. So far, there's no problem, as you can't conclusively prove the customs were colluding with her. It is possible that they were genuinely stupid enough to not even question the motives of a passenger who was flying in and out of the country every second day from the same airport, and that too with such huge amounts of baggage. It gets worse. No one knows why Olga was finally arrested (after all, it's obvious that a large number of customs officials were acting in collusion with her). Maybe some official snitched, maybe there was some extra vigilance by airport security that day, whatever. But hear what happened afterwards. The day after Olga was arrested, a customs alert notice was discovered - one that said Olga was suspected of smuggling goods and so her movements should be watched! It appears the notice was issued after Olga's arrest, but was backdated by around ten days, to make the customs officials look good. They could then claim that her moving in and out of the airport every second day alerted them to the possibility of her being a smuggler, and so on. Why it took them three months to issue this circular is another question, but never mind. Problem is, that when the formal investigation began, and the customs computer records were seized, it was found that though the printed copy of the notice had a particular date, the computer records showed it had been printed 10 days after that date, in fact on the day after Olga's arrest! Worse, between the purported date on the notice and her final arrest, Olga had made two or three more trips to India - so the customs were either lying (as the computer records show) or sleeping. You decide which is more criminal. When the customs officials took Olga to court, and details of her frequent visits became known, Additional Sessions Judge S.N. Dhingra threw the book at the customs officials, saying that there seemed to be some link between them and smugglers, and that there should be a CBI inquiry into the matter. The customs then approached the High Court to get Dhingra's remarks expunged, and said they'd conduct an internal inquiry. This is when Yashwant Sinha got to hear of the case, and fifteen days after Olga's arrest, had around 35 officials transferred, including additional commissioner V.K. Singh Kushwaha who was in charge of arrivals and departures at the airport. A CBI inquiry, however, was not ordered. Instead, the Director General of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and the Director General Vigilance of the Customs department are probing the matter. But surely the computer records that show the notice being fudged, or the airline records that show how much baggage Olga regularly brought in, is easy enough to get. And having got that - forget about finding out what her Indian contacts were to dispose off the silk - surely it can easily be found which of the 35 customs officials were responsible, and action can be taken against them? And it doesn't take upwards of 90 days for just this. An investigation into Olga's disposal route can be conducted separately, or later, why not bring the customs officials to book first - transferring them is just abetting the crime? Unless, of course, that is the very idea. At a pre-budget consultation meeting a few days ago, a senior editor of a pink paper told Sinha that he could raise significantly higher customs revenue if he cleaned up the customs department, which was colluding in massive duty evasion. Sinha took copious notes at the meeting, but would do better to find out why no action has been taken on the Olga case so far.
