So is SP Tyagi just a fall guy - and a willing one at that?
Augusta: The cover-up begins
Ram Jethmalani
March 9, 2013
[Despite their deceptive exterior, the CBI and JPCs are only voices of the ruling government.]
As expected and in predictable fashion, the Agusta Westland scam appeared to recede into the background this week, and not only because it was a week of budgets. But thanks to the exposure by the Italian courts and the details provided by them, the people of India have seen for themselves the flourishing and lucrative partnership in corruption that has thrived between the two regimes.
In the background of the scam and the can of worms it has revealed about the government, clearly, several leaders of the Congress would have had high stakes in the Italian election, with their political interests intersecting substantially. Not surprising therefore, that the people of India have showed a much livelier curiosity regarding its outcome. Well, the Italian election is over, and for the moment Berlusconi's hopes of leading the next government have crashed, along with his semi-Fascist ally, the Lega Nord, despite them reportedly having received election funds from the commissions mulcted from the aam aadmi of India. And the repercussions of this on the Indian Italian scam partnership have yet to fully unfold.
The government and Sonia Gandhi loyalists remained quiet and still for one long year after the scam surfaced in Italy. Berlusconi's departure in November 2011 would have unnerved them considerably. Perhaps they hoped that the storm would not reach India, and felt confident that even if it did, they had enough leverage over the media to snuff it out. Perhaps they thought that Berlusconi would return, and then it would be business as usual. It is only when the situation was fast becoming threatening and irreversible, starting with the sustained exposures in many newspapers, and ending with Orsi's arrest, that Sonia Gandhi and her loyalists started their Standard Operating Procedures for diffusion and cover up of the scam. The country is by now ever so familiar with the drill, that it can forecast every sequential detail well in advance.
They have immense ability to suppress scams, having done so successfully for so many decades now, through loyal spokesmen who at the snap of a finger will swear to the falsest absurdities.
In the first instance, subversion and destruction of evidence must start at the investigation and judicial front, through the help of captive CBI that is forced to bungle, as it did in the Bofors case to destroy it judicially.
Alongside, politically, appoint a JPC, where the Congress will have numerical advantage and indulge in bullying tactics, and give the government a clean chit.
Bureaucrats and policemen are aware that any assistance they give in tough times by complicity, active or passive, is a credit card in their hands which can be encashed when the time is right. Even today, surviving and conniving bureaucrats of the Bofors era continue to encash them for patronage and largesse. And those involved in the Agusta Westland scam have already started encashing them.
In my previous article, I have raised specific questions about the evidence, direct and circumstantial, that gives enough information about the Indian culprits who are involved in this bribery scam. Yet, the Defence Minister looked the other way for one whole year, and gave a clean chit to the deal when the matter was raised in Parliament.
Only after the matter was getting out of control and damning evidence kept mounting from Italy about Indian accomplices and "the family", leading to the arrest of the Orsi, did the same Defence Minister order a CBI enquiry.
What would this imply: either that the Defence Minister was not speaking the truth in the first instance when he spoke to Parliament, or that today, the same Defence Minister admits that he approved a highly questionable defence contract that is being investigated in, of all places, in the supplier country. Antony's plaintive lamentations that the guilty will be punished ran beautifully according to the tired script dictated by his boss. So predictable and ridiculous.
Coming to the CBI team's visit to Italy, it seems like a damp squib, though not too many details are available in the public domain. Obviously, it is just a ruse to buy time.
There is enough circumstantial evidence which mandates immediate arrest, custodial interrogation and securing evidence before the culprits get time to make the evidence disappear. Clearly, the same obfuscating and subversive techniques of the Congress Party are at play, and the people of India know it.
The government and CBI owe an explanation to the people and must inform the public about the following points :
A) What was the brief given to the CBI and exactly what did the CBI achieve in Italy?
B) Was the CBI instructed to assure the Italian authorities, including the judiciary, that India is interested to discover the identity of every culprit, however politically powerful, and whether or not having some Italian connection?
C) What were the written applications or communications made to or exchanged with the Italian authorities? Full particulars of the contents and the responses from the Italians must be informed to the people of India.
D) Have the CBI or the government discovered who procured and how the order of the Italian magistrate running into 50 pages was circulating in India? Has the CBI obtained a certified copy?
E) Will the government inform the nation what diplomatic efforts have been made to secure the evidence of the Indian culprits and the extent of their involvement and what further steps they are intending to take?
F) What is the final advice of our Italian lawyers, who I presume are being paid with our taxpayers' money?
G) The Opposition in Parliament was right that the JPC investigation is a joke. The real action is happening in Italy not India, where the tentacles of the captive CBI cannot reach, and the JPC's writ does not run. But would the government be willing to accept the proposal that the JPC should be headed by an expert with knowledge of criminal law both Indian and Italian, and also familiarity with the well-practised tricks of investigating agencies and other accused adept at suppressing evidence?
H) Will the government instruct the CBI to disclose all steps taken in the course of investigation except those where the disclosure will frustrate the investigation?
A reading of the Italian court order makes it abundantly clear that "the family Tyagi" that is repeatedly referred to does not merely mean Tyagi, and his children or relatives. It clearly refers to the collective family of conspirators.
My public advice to S.P. Tyagi is to come clean and speak the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
All faiths teach us that the road to paradise is not paved with illegally acquired money, but with the extent of public good one has accomplished. At least now he should express contrition and remorse, and I give him my personal assurance, that no harm will come to him.
The country is crying for a government that protects its national interest. It is feeling helpless and frustrated when it is confronted, day after day, with acts of the UPA government and the Hand that controls it, brazenly violating its trust and plundering the nation. The CBI and JPCs can do nothing to redeem the situation, as their past history amply proves. Despite their deceptive exterior, they are only voices of the ruling government.
The present CVC, I am informed, is the same man who as Defence Secretary approved the deal, and is now summoning his own files. All beautifully orchestrated.
Only an SIT answerable to the Supreme Court can provide truthful answers to the nation.
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