Author: R. Prasannan
Publication: The Week
Date: July 21, 2002
Introduction: Victims pick holes
even as experts say the evidence was doctored
As the Venkataswamy Commission is
racing against time to conclude the tehelka hearings by August, the
victims of the sting operation are turning the heat on their accusers.
They had alleged that the tapes had been doctored, but the commission refused
to send the tapes for test by experts. Not discouraged, the victims are
now shooting holes in the tehelka story in a two-pronged counter-attack.
Ironically, one of the prongs is
the report of the Army court of inquiry which has indicted some of them.
The Army inquiry has recommended court-martial of three officers, dismissal
of two and censure of one. But the charge against most of them is not corruption,
but misconduct. Tehelka was unable to convince the Army court that the
officers had taken money from Westend (the fictitious company floated by
tehelka).
The other prong is tehelka's lack
of any record. Despite all the hidden cameras, lakhs of rupees, girls and
gold coins tehelka could not procure anything more than 100 hours of video
recording of loose talk by self-styled arms agents and a few clips of bribe-taking
by people totally unconnected with defence procurement.
What has surprised even the portal's
supporters is that it has, even after having been 'offered', not procured
any documents to substantiate any of its allegations. Recently, tehelka's
Aniruddha Bahal told the commission that the loose-talking arms agent R.K.
Jain "was offering us some documents. It is my eternal regret that I didn't
take them".
A clinching piece of evidence of
corruption would have been the 'order' alleged to have been issued by Major-General
P.S.K. Choudary asking Westend to bring its hand-held thermal imagers for
trial evaluation. Tehelka had claimed that "Gen. Choudary issued a trial
evaluation order in the third week of January. It was a 26-page order.
Major-General S.P Murgai [the retired officer who was liaisoning between
Westend and Army officers] collected it for us. Mehta's [additional secretary
in the defence ministry] dilemma was that he couldn't organise an evaluation
letter just for Westend and had to include 3-4 more companies. He did that."
Where is this letter? What is its
date? Which are the other companies? They should also have got the letter
if it was issued. No one has reported having received any, leading many
to believe that no such letter exists, or ever existed.
When asked about the letter in the
Army inquiry, reporter Samuel Mathew had said that Murgai had collected
the letter and had told him about it. Tehelka had claimed that they tried
to procure the letter from him, but by then their cover had been blown.
"For three days we tried to ambush Gen. Murgai at his home. On each of
these occasions the cars of [industrialist] Surendra Singh and Gen. Choudary
were parked outside. The trio have been in constant consultation to plan
a damage limitation exercise."
However, in the Army inquiry, Mathew's
story was a little different when quizzed by Gen. Choudary. "I have personally
not seen your car outside Maj.-Gen. Murgai's residence. It was seen by
my driver who recognised the car on two occasions," Mathew told the court.
Gen. Choudary had a specific intention
in asking the question. For, even if he had wanted, he could not have issued
such a letter. Trial evaluation orders are issued not by the Army but by
the defence ministry.
The Army inquiry is learnt to have
recorded that even the preliminary moves to issue such a letter had not
been initiated. No files had moved, no one had asked anyone to move files
for West End. The probe is also learnt to have found that Maj.-Gen Satnam
Singh, Maj.-Gen M.S. Ahluwalia and Lt.-Col. B.B. Sharma did not accept
any money from West End.
That the allegations against Ahluwalia
were false was clear even to lay viewers of the broadcast tape and the
published transcripts (The Week, Sept 2, 2001). Now it is learnt that tehelka
admitted before the Army inquiry that the general made no demand for money
or Blue Label whisky. The news portal apparently used his speech mannerism
(of speaking in the first person) as evidence that he had made such a demand.
Now before the Commission, the portal was even willing to apologise to
the general. All the same, the Army inquiry has recommended dismissal of
Ahluwalia and Sharma and censure of Satnam Singh for misconduct.
The three other service officers
who appear in the tape, Maj.-Gen. Choudary, Brig. Iqbal Singh and Col.
Anil Sehgal will be court-martialled.
The case against L.M. Mehta too
seems shaky. Tehelka had accused him of taking a gold chain. However, shot
262 of the published tapes shows him cautioning the Westend representative
that the ministry deals only with employees of companies, and not agents
or "chief liaisoning officers". In the entire published tape Mehta does
nothing more than explain the procedure. At the end of the conversation
tehelka merely says, "Mehta takes his gold chain gift".
But the master tape shows something
different. Reporter Mathew gives a box to Gen. Murgai and Mehta protests,
"No, no, no, no, nahin, nahin." When Murgai places the box on the table,
Mehta picks it up and says "Yeh rakhiye aap" (You keep this). Mehta is
also heard protesting, "This is not good," but the camera does not show
anything.
In the Army inquiry Gen. Murgai's
version was that Mathew took a packet of pastries. After that he took out
another packet and gave it to Mehta who refused to take it and returned
to Mathew. "Samuel then gave the same packet to me. I then placed it on
the table. When we were about to leave the house, Mr L.M. Mehta took the
packet and returned it to Mr Samuel Mathew."
Mehta's own version before the Bagai
committee, which probed the allegations against civilian officers, was
this: "After I had returned the box to Gen. Murgai, an attempt is made
then to foist it by smuggling it into a carry bag, perceptibly containing
some cake or pastry box, and I thwart their design by pulling it out from
the carry bag to hand it back. Tehelka says, 'It is okay' to which I react
by handing back the box, saying, 'No, no, it is not okay'."
Tehelka had also alleged that Mehta
issued a letter to Gen. Choudary and asked for Rs 2 lakh in cash. "He was
paid Rs 50,000 by Gen. Murgai as advance in his office and the rest was
promised upon receipt of the letter." There is no such footage in either
the published tape or the master tape, arguably because the money was paid
through Gen. Murgai. (The general denied this in the Army inquiry.) But
as Mehta's friends point out, the figure should have been there in the
table of bribes given at the end of the transcripts. It is not. The table
lists only a gold chain for Mehta. The question is: which is correct? Page
144 of the transcript which says Mehta was given Rs 50,000 or the unnumbered
page, 146, which says he was given only a gold chain?
The portal has been saying that
it supplied women to the officers because they had made such a demand.
The tapes showed three officers in the room in Park Hotel where there were
women. A surprised Brig. Iqbal Singh is seen chasing the women out. Only
Col. Sharma could be accused of having sinned, but Sharma's wife now says
that his drink had been spiked and tehelka had been blackmailing him afterwards.
Tehelka's versions against Brig.
Iqbal Singh raise suspicions. The tape voice-over says the brigadier accepted
Rs 50,000 in the Park Hotel room, but the tape does not show that. In the
Army inquiry, tehelka says the money was taken by Brig. Singh and handed
over to Lt. Col. Sayal, the portal's 'conduit' to many officers. And that
Sayal gave it to him the next day at his residence. So where did the brigadier
get his money? In the hotel, as the voice-over said, or at home, as the
reporter told the court?
The table of bribes provided along
with the published transcripts lists 34 instances of bribe payment to 16
people. But the tapes show only 13 people. Of them two never asked, nor
got anything. Three of the remaining 11 never asked for money, but were
offered and did not take it.
That leaves eight people who took
money. Of these eight, seven did not ask for money but accepted when offered.
The only person who asked for money and took it was the retired colonel
Sayal.
It is also becoming clear that six
of the Army officers allegedly involved had no role in the procurement
section. The Army inquiry did not find any evidence that any serving officer
did anything to help the deal. Some succumbed to the bribes which were
offered, but in no way helped West End. Those who took bribes are still
recommended for court- martial; the others for misconduct (of talking too
much?)
No different seems to be the case
against the politicians. The voice-over on page 71 of the transcripts says:
"The series of meetings with R.K. Jain proved to be a gold mine of information
about past and present defence deals. It incriminates beyond redemption
Defence Minister George Fernandes." But what Jain tells tehelka on the
tape is exactly to the contrary. In shot 245 Jain says, "George won't take
money. He won't take money." Jain is shown saying that Yashwant Sinha,
Digvijay Singh, Sharad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan (all Union ministers
then) take money, but "George doesn't take money".
Similarly, in the case of Bangaru
Laxman, the voice-over says: "Throughout the meeting Bangaru Laxman had
the expectancy (sic) that Alvin D'Souza would just open his briefcase and
out would come some odd $25,000. But that was not to be. In the end he
asks himself." But neither the published version nor the master tapes have
anything showing Laxman asking for money.
The victims believe that the commission
has erred in refusing to get the tapes examined by experts. For one, tehelka
had claimed that they had approached Jaya Jaitley in George Fernandes'
house in the evening when she meets party workers. Since it was winter
it should have been dark by 6 p.m.. However, the camera shows the house
in broad daylight which has led many to suspect that tehelka put together
a collage of shots.
Chris Mills, a former Royal Navy
officer and a former Metropolitan Police (London) forensic expert who was
asked by Jaitley to examine tape 73 and 74, found that both had been tampered
with.
"If the original tapes are not examined,"
he says, "it is difficult to understand how any of the tapes can be relied
on as presenting a truthful picture of events."
Mills claims to have examined two
tapes of the same event at Fernandes' house. Tehelka had carried two hidden
camerasÑone in the suitcase and the other on a necktie.
The recording of the same event
by the two cameras have different results, different timings between two
events (two door knocks between which the characters speak). Similarly,
another expert, Milin Kapoor, found at least 10 cuts in tape 73.
Counsels for the noticees now say
that the portion where Anil Sehgal says, "First give me 10 lakhs, then
I will talk" (page 3 of transcript) was actually "first give me an update".
On page 9 of the transcript Col. Sayal is heard saying "CSF Thomson have
got the order" which is alleged to have been changed to "previous company
have got the order."
Six such instances of changing
words have been brought out by various experts. In another four instances,
words actually spoken and recorded on the tapes have been allegedly removed
from the master tape. In another two instances words have allegedly been
added. Yet another two instances, one involving Bangaru Laxman, the lip
movement is not in line with the conversation. A good part of the sequence
involving Brig. Iqbal Singh is now alleged to be a cut and paste job.
In short, the tehelka tapes now
seem to be heading towards the other infamous political tape: the Moily
tape whose authenticity could not be established. The only difference is
that it was the Congress in Karnataka that was at the receiving end of
allegations then. Now it is the turn of its opponents.
