SCAMSTERS INC.

The union government Saturday told the Supreme Court that it was doing everything on the issue of retrieving over Rs.70 trillion ($1.4 trillion) in black money believed to be stashed away in foreign banks by rich Indians.

The government said this in an affidavit filed in the apex court in response to a lawsuit by former union law minister Ram Jethmalani, former Lok Sabha general secretary Subhash C. Kashyap and former Punjab Police chief K.P.S. Gill, which had sought the court's direction to the government to retrieve the unaccounted money.

In its affidavit, the government termed the lawsuit as "politically motivated" and questioned the timing of its filing, in the midst of the general elections, and sought its dismissal.

So...what next? any guess?

The Bofors gun payoff scandal flared up again Tuesday with the election-wrapped Congress coming under all round attack over the CBI decision to remove Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, the lone surviving suspect in the case, from its list of wanted persons.

The 12-year Interpol Red Corner Notice, or lookout notice, against Quattrocchi, who has till date evaded interrogation, was taken off from the "wanted" section of the agency's website, reportedly on the legal advice of Attorney General Milon Banerjee in October last year. As the CBI's move was scooped by the Indian Express newspaper Tuesday, two days before the third round of India's five-phase general elections, it provided readymade ammunition to political parties seeking to end five years of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accused the Congress of turning the CBI into a "Congress Bureau of Investigation" and branded the decision a "farewell gift" from the government to a "close friend" of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.BJP leader L.K. Advani, campaigning in Gujarat, said the decision proved that the Congress was not confident of returning to power after the staggered Lok Sabha elections ending next month.

"Manmohan Singh's party wanted to remove his name from the list. The decision indicates they think their party will not come back to power," he said. "I condemn the decision."

Under flak, CBI spokesperson Harsh Behl said the agency would inform the special judge of a Delhi court, trying the 1987 case of the Rs.640 million payoff for the Swedish howitzer guns, of the decision during the next hearing on April 30."The case has been under trial in the courts since 1999. The CBI has taken action on basis of legal advice of the highest order. We will inform the competent court," said Behl.

Quattrocchi, accused by the CBI of receiving millions of dollars in commissions for helping to fix the $1.4 billion gun deal in the mid-1980s, was detained in February 2007 in Argentina where he was holidaying with his wife on the basis of an Interpol warrant.

But the CBI took time in translating documents that were to be presented in the designated court there and put up a half-hearted effort towards his extradition. It lost the case for his extradition four months later.

The BJP's prime ministerial candidate Advani reminded voters that though the Congress led by Rajiv Gandhi won a thumping majority in the 1984 elections, it lost power five years later due to the Bofors controversy.In New Delhi, BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley was at his sarcastic best."The CBI has become an embarrassment for the entire country. Quattrochi has been a close friend of the Congress leadership. Therefore, at the time of the departure (of the UPA government), it is a gift to the citizen of a privileged country. It is a gift to a nation in law," he said.

The Congress tried to downplay the embarrassment, saying the Bofors row was "a dead horse"."Bofors has been a dead horse which the BJP has tried to flog in several elections, and it has not succeeded," said Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi.

Law Minister H.R. Bhardwaj argued that the government had nothing to do with the development."The government had no role in the removal of the red corner notice," he said. "The CBI acted solely on the advice of the attorney general. It is a politically motivated allegation."But the opposition was not satisfied.

While Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati alleged that the government was misusing the CBI, the Left parties described the move as a subversion of justice."The CBI decision to remove Ottavio Quattrocchi from its list of wanted persons has again unmasked the Congress," said Mayawati.

The case against Quattrocchi, known to be close to the late Rajiv Gandhi, who was prime minister in 1987 when the scandal broke, and his wife Sonia, has taken tortuous twists and turns after being named in a CBI chargesheet as the conduit for the Bofors bribes in 1999.

Source: Express Buzz

The owner of a shopping mall, who allegedly played a key role in the DDA flat allotment fraud by pumping in Rs 15 lakh for cornering dwellings, has been arrested in the national capital, police said today.

Jeet Ram, who was on the run since the case came to light, was caught by the Economic Offences Wing of Delhi Police's Crime Branch yesterday from Mam Mam Majesty Mall in Pitampura. He was one of the owners of the mall.

"We have caught Jeet Ram who was absconding. We are also trying to arrest other financiers who are involved in the case," Joint Commissioner of Police Amulya Patnaik told PTI.

This is the seventh arrest in the case of a group ofproperty dealers who entered into a conspiracy to corner DDA flats reserved for SC/STs by fraudulently applying in the name of people belonging to these communities.Jeet Ram's name cropped up during interrogation of Gautam, who allegedly managed to corner 40 flats in the draw of lots under various names.

According to Patnaik, the financier allegedly provided Rs 15 lakh to Gautam for committing the fraud. Gautam also issued post-dated cheques as a security in favour of Jeet Ram. Patnaik said police tried to catch the financier but was not successful till yesterday. "We managed to catch him after one of our teams kept a close watch on the mall," he said.

Source: Indian Express

Police Tuesday said they have arrested one of the key accused financers in the multi-million Delhi Development Authority (DDA) housing scam.

'We arrested Jeetram Monday. We were looking for him for some time for his role in financing the scam,' Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Amulya Patnaik told IANS.

'He is among those who provided money to former DDA official M.L. Gautam. There are more financiers involved in the case and we hope they will also be arrested soon,' Patnaik added.

Over 500,000 people applied for 5,238 flats under the DDA housing scheme 2008. But the housing scheme got mired in controversies amid allegations of fake applications. The scam came to light earlier this year.

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Delhi Police, started investigations after a man who was allotted a flat in the draw of lots told the police that he had not even applied for a flat.

Investigations revealed that a group of people conspired to buy several flats in the names of those from reserved categories like the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes who were eligible for the flats but could not afford them. The conspirators meant to sell off these flats later for huge profits.

So far the EOW has arrested Deepak Kumar, who allegedly blew the lid off the scam after he fell out with some fellow real estate agents, retired DDA employee M.L. Gautam, real estate agents - Raju Ram, Laxmi Narayan Meena and Vijay Pal.

Satbir Singh and Dinesh Dral were arrested for forging the documents to open bank accounts in fictitious names. And the last one arrested March 19 was Suresh Kumar Meena, a Delhi based real estate agent.

The EOW has been probing the roots of the scam in various states.

Earlier this month, the agency filed its charge sheet in the court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Amit Bansal slapping several charges against the accused, including cheating, forgery, criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence.

Source: sify.com

In an excess of excitement, Vir Sanghvi, former editor of Hindustan Times, called Narendra Modi a “mass murderer”. According to data tabled in Parliament the 2002 toll in Gujarat was 790 dead Muslims, 254 dead Hindus and 223 people missing. Writing in The Times of India (January 6, 2008) one of its columnists, Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar made this interesting statement. He wrote: “Many critics call (Narendra) Modi a fascist who carried out pogroms. They do not apply the same label to the Congress. Yet the 1984 data are more suggestive of a pogrom than the 2002 data. The Hindu casualties in 2002 were a quarter of the total, suggesting two-way violence. But no Hindus died in Delhi... In 1984 there was no police firing at all on Hindu mobs, so it looks much more like a pogrom. On virtually every parameter you can measure, 1984 was worse than 2002...” (emphasis added).

And how many Sikhs were murdered in Delhi alone in November 1984? Writes The Hindu (April 13, 2009): “A sloppy and non-serious process of investigation and prosecution meant that the perpetrators of the genocidal violence against thousands of innocent Sikhs... have gone scot-free. The killing spree by Congress activists and supporters, allegedly orchestrated and led by some party leaders, left 2,733 people dead in Delhi alone. But after two Commissions of Inquiry and eight committees set up to probe various aspects of the horrific violence and prolonged trials, only 13 people have been convicted…”

Several of the committees indicted Congress leader HKL Bhagat and Messrs Tytler and Sajjan Kumar. In Gujarat, 254 Hindus were killed in police firings. In Delhi not a single Hindu was killed. In Delhi just one leader—sure, she was Prime Minister—was killed. In Godhra 58 innocent women and children were first choked by heavy smoke and then roasted alive. Fancy the suffering they went through. This is never discussed. The women and children were just ‘killed’. The viciousness of the English media is sickening. Messrs Tytler and Sajjan Kumar are still around and the former has now been denied a Congress ticket. Big show!

The hate-Hindu, hate-BJP tendency among our English media overlords has to be seen to be believed. For saying any Muslim who raises his arm against Hindus should have his arm cut off, Varun Gandhi has been jailed—and now forgotten. Lalu Prasad said that he would like to run a road-roller over Varun—and he goes scot-free. Lalu specialises in hate-speeches. That is taken as a joke. A Congress leader in Karnataka makes a ‘hate speech’ on March 31 excelling even what Varun Gandhi said, but only a case has been registered against him, while Varun went to jail. This is justice.

The Hindu in its April 13 editorial castigated the CBI saying that the CBI’s “clumsy efforts to help the ruling party (Congress) to “wriggle out of messy situations have further eroded the agency’s credibility”. Rightly said. Indeed, two years ago, on June 7, 2007, The Hindu castigated “the compulsions of politics” indulged in by the Congress in the Taj Corridor Scam case in which Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati was involved. She should then have been immediately prosecuted. Wrote The Hindu: “That the UP Governor (TM Rajeshwar) could have refused sanction for a prosecution that arose from the monitoring by the highest court in the land (The Supreme Court) is inexplicable. It has raised suspicions that the decision was part of a political deal struck in the context of the presidential elections...”

Undoubtedly the Congress is a sick party. Varun Gandhi’s speech was made in a place called Pilibhit. It is a tiny town in Uttar Pradesh. If Varun has not made his speech there, like many other such speeches it would have remained unheard of. But is there anything special about Pilibhit? Yes, there is, and The Indian Express (April 5) devoted two whole pages to it. It would seem that Pilibhit has for decades, if not longer, been known for “making music”. As The Express noted, by one estimate roughly 95 per cent of India’s flutes are made in Pilibhit. It seems that the bamboo for the flute would come to Pilibhit all the way from Silchar on the banks of the Barak river near the Bangladesh border in southern Assam by a meter-gauge line. Once the bamboo arrived, flute-makers, invariably Muslims, working in small family businesses, would carefully sort out the bamboo bales, identifying each piece as first, second and third grade. Only the right kind of bamboo, with the right length and diameter, would produce the right tune.

The coverage of The Indian Express of Pilibhit is an excellent example of journalism. The business of manufacturing flutes is apparently dying slowly for a variety of reasons. These have been discussed. The paper’s editorial staff needs to be congratulated for a good job well done. There is another matter concerning the media that needs attention. Newspapers like The Hindu, The Times of India, The Indian Express have many regional editions which is commendable. But too often they are very poor replicas of the main editions and miss out a great deal of news and comment. The Bangalore edition of The Indian Express, for example, is not a patch on the Mumbai edition. Much the same can be said of the Bangalore edition of The Times of India. The Bombay city edition of the Express, for example, runs an excellent op ed page devoting it to articles appearing in the likes of The Economist of London, which are highly educative.

Considering that hardly any major newspaper these days employs foreign correspondents, as once they did, especially in the sixties, seventies and even earlier in the fifties, the reader is deprived of a lot of background material to events not just in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States, but also in Africa, the Middle East, Russia, Central Asia, Australia and even China. It is a pity. The argument for withdrawing foreign correspondents is that television channels are first to break news and cannot be beaten at the game. That may be true, but TV channels don’t provide background information or even an Indian point of view to what is happening. Of course, maintaining a correspondent in Washington or Beijing is getting to be extremely costly. One supposes that the alternative is to subscribe to foreign newspapers, not necessarily a wise step but then there aren’t any meaningful options. Time was when The Times of India used to subscribe to The New York Times. No longer. The net result is that the Indian reader is poorly informed.

Source: organiser.org

THE BJP seems to be making a habit of issuing its “vision” in instalments. Maybe, this is their way of keeping in tune with the global economic recession when payments are being deferred or at best paid in instalments. Or, maybe, it is the lack of any clarity of vision that is making them take recourse to such steps. Or, yet again, maybe, this is a convenient methodology that can allow them to completely contradict themselves and renege from their earlier promises to the people.


Following their electronic “vision” to empower all Indians to be cyber savvy came the BJP's manifesto, which as the name suggests, should have detailed their proposals if they, by any chance, form the government, post elections. However, now has come their `vision' on infrastructure development with promises of more bombardments of such `visions' in the future. This is not merely the unfolding of the lack of clarity in instalments but more like a distress sale under recession: `buy one, take two free'.


Promising to adopt a hundred projects of national importance, this document has virtually nothing that has not been said earlier by everyone including the BJP. However, there are two aspects that merit a comment. The first is the brazen negation of their attitude to India's public sector when they were leading the government between 1998 and 2004. They had established a separate ministry for disinvestment and proceeded to try and decimate the public sector systematically. Recollect the scams involved in the sale of public sector units and properties during that period. Under pressure from the Left, the first decision that the UPA government took was to disband this ministry in 2004.


Look at what they say now in this `vision' document: “India's public sector, which has amassed tremendous experience in infrastructure project implementation over the decades, is our national pride (sic). The NDA government will strengthen the public sector, and enable it to make its fullest contribution to infrastructure expansion in India. At the same time, we will also fully encourage participation by India's private sector, which has grown enormously both in size and project implementation capability. The government will fully leverage the private sector's resources and capabilities by aggressively expanding the scope of Public-Private Partnership.” Indeed, as noted above, a very convenient methodology to renege from its past position! More importantly, this is a crass cynical attempt to woo the votes of a vast section of Indians that support and depend upon the public sector.


This brings us to the second aspect, that is, Public-Private Partnership (PPP). Both the Congress and the BJP continue to emphasise this concept. However, what has been our experience of the past. Take the instance of the PPP model adopted for airport modernisation. Because the private party is currently incurring losses due to their own miscalculations and decrease in the volumes of passenger traffic due to global recession, they have been permitted to levy a hefty user development fee per passenger at the airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad. It is the public that has to pay for the business miscalculations of the private parties. This is the logic of PPP. Note that the government-run airports, even if they are making losses, are not allowed to do so since these are public utilities. Clearly, this BJP 'vision' is one of imposing greater burdens on the people.


Such a methodology of double-speak was also evident when the BJP's prime ministerial hopeful L K Advani while releasing this document turned turtle on `BJP's stand on the India-US nuclear deal'. On November 28, 2007, the following were Advani's last words in the debate on the India-US nuclear deal in the Lok Sabha. “I shall conclude my remarks by saying that the 123 Agreement, as it stands, is unacceptable to the nation because it is deeply detrimental to India's vital and long-term interests. Let me say that hereafter if NDA gets a mandate, we will renegotiate this deal to see that all the adverse provisions in it are either deleted or this treaty is rejected completely.”


Now what does he say? “I take cognisance of the fact that the government is a continuing matter. Treaty signed by an earlier government cannot be easily disregarded”. Leave alone rejecting the treaty “completely”, there is no mention of even an effort to “renegotiate” the treaty. Likewise, the word `renegotiate' does not appear in the voluminous manifesto that the BJP had issued earlier.


Clearly, the BJP was misleading the nation on the India-US nuclear deal, in an effort to mask its real pro-US imperialist stand. After all, it was the BJP-led NDA government that initiated the process of developing a strategic alliance of India with US imperialism. It was they who further strengthened relations with Israel. The UPA government under Dr Manmohan Singh's leadership has ably carried forward this process of subservience to US imperialism. Advani is now promising that if ever the BJP comes to power, it shall carry forward this process further and make India a junior subordinate ally of US imperialism.


Such are the perfidious games that the BJP plays. What they say for public consumption is entirely different and, at times, the complete opposite of their real agenda and intentions. The most blatant expression of this is their so-called acceptance of the secular democratic foundations of the modern Indian Republic. Functioning as the political arm of the RSS, they want to convert this Republic into a rabidly intolerant fascistic “Hindu Rashtra”. It is for this precise reason that they must be prevented from holding the reins of State power. Indian people must, for the sake of a better India and a better future of its people, ensure that a non-Congress, non-BJP secular alternative forms the government post 2009 general elections.

Source: pd.cpim.org

The Meghalaya Police is considering seeking the help of either CID or CBI to probe the alleged embezzlement of Central funds worth
several lakhs by a few NCC officials. The funds were meant for promoting NCC activities in the North-East.

East Khasi Hills Superintendent of Police Last Born Rapthap told reporters here that the cops alone would not be able to investigate the case and that he had written to the headquarters seeking to hand over the case to CID or CBI.

"Since the case is related to embezzlement of Central funds, we feel that investigating agencies like CID or CBI would be more appropriate to take up this case," Rapthap said. An FIR had been lodged by NCC deputy director general Brigadier P R Sharma with the Cantonment Police Beat House here alleging that two officials of the Shillong-based Directorate of National Cadet Corps (NCC) had misused demand drafts meant for various NCC group headquarters in the North-East amounting to Rs 43 lakh.

The SP said the preliminary findings of the state police indicated that over Rs 66 lakh of Central funds were misappropriated. However, neither NCC officials involved in the scam were arrested nor could the passbooks used for depositing the money be seized, Rapthap added.

Police had earlier stated that the investigation would take some time, as a special investigation team (SIT) had to crosscheck the records at the Central Bank here. A separate court of inquiry has also been ordered by the NCC headquarters and three senior officials are already in the city to conduct the court of inquiry.

Brigadier Sharma, in the FIR, said demand drafts worth Rs 43 lakh had been "misused". Sources said the amount was only the "tip of an iceberg" and further investigations would reveal the real magnitude of the scandal involving senior NCC officials.

According to the FIR, the amount that was siphoned off was on demand draft payable to various group headquarters in the region. They include the demand draft of the Central Bank of India dated December 22, 2008 payable at Kohima NCC Group headquarter amounting to Rs 3,24,788, a de-mand draft dated June 24, 2008 worth Rs 2 lakh payable at Guwahati, NCC Group headquarter, another dated July 12, 2008 amounting to Rs 3 lakh payable at Guwahati and a demand draft dated December 22, 2008 amounting to Rs 6 lakh payable at Guwahati. The disappearance of funds came to light after the NCC's Dibrugarh group headquarters informed the Shillong Directorate in March that it had not received any demand draft worth Rs 9 lakh. The NCC Silchar group headquarters also lodged a similar complaint.

On receiving such complaints, accounts officer of NCC's Shillong office VW Lahkar crosschecked with the banks concerned about the status of the demand drafts and found that the drafts were cancelled and the signatures were forged.

According to the FIR, a clerk of the NCC directorate, D C Borah from Sivasagar district, Assam was involved in the scam in connivance with a few staff of the Shillong Cantonment Branch of the Central Bank of India. Sources revealed that Brigadier Sharma in a confidential report sent to the NCC authorities in the first week of April intimated the finding of the preliminary inquiry, which named NCC Director Colonel A K Barua as one of the officials involved in the scam. Both Colonel Barua and Borah had retired from service on January 31 this year.

Source: TOI