Willing to broaden the scope of its investigation,the CBI has armed itself with a letter rogatory for conducting a probe in Israel into the Rs 1,150-crore Barak missile deal case that has George Fernandes,Jaya Jaitley,then Naval Chief Admiral Susheel Kumar and arms dealer Suresh Nanda as the accused.
A Delhi court on Tuesday issued letter rogatory on CBIs request,which claimed that it was imperative to go abroad for collecting evidence and getting more leads in the case.
A letter rogatory is a formal request by a court to a foreign court for judicial assistance to an investigating agency in collecting evidence and service of court’s processes. It is submitted that the investigation is required to be conducted in Israel,for a part of the offence was committed over there as the commission was paid by the seller in violation of the contract entered with the GoI. It is further submitted that documents are to be collected from Israel and certain statements are required to be recorded over there in order to trace the chain of money,” the investigating officer submitted.
India had acquired seven Barak systems for Rs 1,160 crore with 200 missiles for Rs 350 crore from M/s Israel Aircraft Industries and M/s Rafael,Israel,respectively for the Navy. The FIR alleged that Rs 1 crore was paid to Jaitley.