Life Among the Scorpions

by Jaya Jaitly

  ~

  The media, including women journalists and a host of others, pretending to be fair and over-friendly, held long interviews with me ultimately twisting the stories saying I had promised the visitors an appointment with the Defence Minister and much else. One wrote a fat tome on this episode with a spicy snippet that while I claimed to be a socialist, I was not beyond wearing lacy innerwear of which she got a glimpse as she pinned the microphone to my blouse. She went into discussing George Fernandes’s defending me in the Justice Venkataswami and the Justice Phukan Inquiry Commission that followed, expressing envy that I had such a person to defend me, in the style of a literary-romantic trance imitating Bridget Jones’s Diary, a work of fiction. It was a sad commentary on what the doyens of our media were all about.

  The only person who was decent, fair and truly wanting answers to serious questions as a responsible journalist was A. Surya Prakash, who often wrote for the Pioneer, and was commissioned by Zee TV to interview me. He took the trouble to first discuss the whole incident with me and after convincing himself that I had some serious things to say, did a lengthy interview which was reproduced faithfully. He is the Chairman of Prasar Bharati today, the head of all government media operations. However, a rigorous and effective Press Council/ Broadcasting Council never emerged as a result of these messy sting operations. The courts have repeatedly, in fact as recently as 2014, asked for laws or regulations to be framed so that stings don’t become vigilante-type or hit-operations on behalf of others. So far, nothing effective has emerged here either.

  ~

  I have my own theories of why all this happened, but they are merely speculative. Connecting the dots and proving anything conclusively is not within my capacity, without documents. The perfect occasion for the government or any of us to get to the bottom of who was behind such a clumsily handled, incompetent ‘investigation’, carried out without any supporting documents or actions which were a result of corruption, was sadly lost through the undermining of the Inquiry Commission itself.

  All I came to know from documents shared by officials, press reports and facts that emerged during questioning in the Justice Venkataswami/Phukan Inquiry Commission at that time, is that Tehelka was heavily funded through the hawala funds from abroad. I know that the Congress Party constantly took an undue interest in the matter and chief honcho of the Enforcement Directorate had a signed confession of a hawala operator in Chennai, who said he received funds from Brussels and had sent them to First Global in Mauritius. This was the company belonging to Shankar Sharma that heavily funded Tehelka for Operation West End.

  Later, in early March 2001, First Global discovered it was under investigation by SEBI (the Securities and Exchange Board of India) for playing the stock market with hawala funds. This was just a week before the incomplete and factually incorrect Tehelka story of defence deals broke. When First Global went to the high court in Mumbai accusing the government of mala fide intent in taking action against them, the court was shown the SEBI orders on the files. They threw out its petition without allowing any further arguments. Tehelka claimed, in the media, on their website and at the commission of inquiry, that they had been compelled to break the story, incomplete and with vast inaccuracies, with no documents or evidence because they had been spotted by someone they had been filming.

  In the end, Operation West End merely turned out to be a shoddily created tale of how Indian politicians and defence officials could possibly be corrupted if offered money, by pretending it was a genuine business deal, being presented with a fake problem claiming an injustice needing redressal, or call girls forced upon unsuspecting army officers, or plied with enough alcohol to make them boast that they were influential enough to swing any deal in the sin city of Delhi. Just like with their cricket sting, Tehelka journalists neither managed to expose genuine corruption in cricket nor did they even touch the surface of the real scams that came tumbling out of the closet later. They obviously targeted the ethical and honest people to destroy them rather than truly go after crooks. I surmised that Congress was an obvious beneficiary of the Tehelka defence corruption story, hoping to wipe out public memory of its own Bofors corruption. For example, they had sent a senior law officer of the UPA-I government to unfreeze Ottavio Quattrocchi’s London accounts which had the money he had allegedly been paid as commission on the Bofors deal.* P.V. Narasimha Rao’s government had earlier reportedly let him flee India overnight to save him from the probes into the scandal. It is hard not to come to the conclusion that big money from unknown persons were behind the Operation West End Project.

  ~

  Aditi’s wedding was held at Kashmir House on Prithviraj Road in New Delhi. I paid 36,000 rupees for the simple decorations and Aditi’s father paid 150,000 rupees for the Kashmiri food made by cooks brought in from Srinagar. I bought Aditi a sari from Nalli’s for 8000 rupees. That is all. No jewellery was purchased as we did not need anything except the South Indian mangalsutra.*

  On the morning of the wedding, it drizzled slightly. Aniruddha Bahal had the gall to send a text message to Aditi saying ‘rain on the wedding day is a good omen’! We managed to send invitations to those we could remember at a time when I was distracted with the media storm above my head. More than a thousand people came as guests. The cars were parked from as far a distance as 3 kilometres away. There was no valet parking. Many said the huge response was a show of solidarity by our friends. I had visited Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to hand over the formal invitation but gave him a way out in case he was embarrassed to attend the wedding of a person under so many allegations. He not only came, but also stayed for an hour and a half, dining comfortably in the company of George Fernandes and Farooq Abdullah, who acted like hosts all evening. I was very touched by this moral support the prime minister indirectly gave me. Madhuri Dixit, our favourite movie actor, and some of Ajay’s cricketer friends came but I refused to let the media enter. After their fierce pursuit of me on the Tehelka story, I found it only right that they not be made part of my daughter’s wedding. Every guest had to leave their mobile phones outside. One ‘friend’ brought hers in. She couldn’t resist being the journalist she was and took a picture on the sly and posted it alongside a piece in The Indian Express describing my clothes and the important hosts of the evening. The only picture we gave to the media ourselves was one taken of the married couple after midnight.

  I had so blocked my emotions to withstand the Tehelka nightmare that I went through my daughter’s wedding like a hospitable robot, with no feelings at all—neither the usual emotions of sadness at giving away a daughter, or happiness and excitement at her marriage. When she asked what I would do after she left home, I joked, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. I will keep five dogs.’ She enjoys telling everyone this story to describe how her mother’s love for her was equated with her love of dogs.

  *See “Why and how were Q’s London accounts defrozen?” in ‘The Q files: Acquitted without trial?’, Neeraj Mishra and Priya Sahgal, 30 January 2006, India Today, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/bofors-deal-scandal-under-controversy-upa-government-on-target/1/181913.html

  *In traditional Hindu wedding ceremonies, the mangalsutra is the sacred necklace the groom ties onto the bride’s neck that the latter wears as a symbol of being married.

  19

  OMISSIONS IN THE COMMISSION

  From Operation West End to Operation Abort

  IN APRIL 2001, THE NDA government set up the Justice K. Venkataswami Commission of Inquiry to examine the truth behind the allegations made in the Tehelka tapes. There were two parts to the inquiry. The first part aimed at examining whether the Defence Ministry had done its job in terms of its fifteen actual procurement decisions that involved aircrafts, missiles, advance jet trainers, rocket launchers, etc. The purpose was to ensure that the purchases had been made without compromising national security. Strangely, these covered negotiations still in progress and even those completed by earlier regimes. The purpose of naming as many
as fifteen of these was to seriously call into question all major decisions purportedly being handled by the NDA government.

  The second part dealt with the ‘documentary’ provided by Tehelka, one that supposedly showed corruption in action. It was, in essence, a story created with the aim of lending authenticity to allegations of wrongdoing in the actual ‘deals’. This set of tapes, accompanied by a vivid, defamatory commentary, prepared the viewer for a ringside seat to seediness, compromise, and illicit back-room conversations soaked in alcohol, call girls, lewd talk, and flashing of currency notes. We were unknowing and hapless actors in this orchestrated drama. The opposition led by the Congress party, of course, thought the government had to fall by the end of the day.

  Everyone actually appearing on Tehelka’s videotapes speaking about those ‘deals’, or in any manner engaging in conversation with Tehelka journalists posing as arms- and electronics-dealers, however innocently, were issued 8B notices which made them directly answerable to the Commission. George Fernandes was issued only an 8A notice which did not make him an accused but merely afforded him the opportunity to appear before the Commission in case he wished to protect his own interests. From the very beginning, however, he was attacked in Parliament and outside, on a daily basis, as if he was the main accused. That was because I am shown talking to some people who are never visible on screen, from my desk at the office-cum-residence of George Fernandes, the defence minister of India. George Fernandes was never caught on tape as the makers could not get near him. I was attacked on an everyday basis as a rogue, companion, mistress, sleeping partner, conspirator, and a corrupt, greedy, wheeler-dealer engaging with shady characters in the dark back rooms of an official residence to make money through habitually venal methods. Tehelka’s website kept up this tirade while the media happily followed suit, except for a few honourable exceptions.

  I am deliberately not going into what actually transpired from my point of view, and is part of a vague memory of a wholly insignificant event to no consequence at all because the interminable court case that ultimately followed, is still not over. It is stifling and frustrating for me since I was eager to have the inquiry proceed correctly and quickly, and have my truth heard and assessed. I was certain the sham investigation— full of frame-ups, entrapment and assumed identities—would be revealed for what it was. But it has not happened yet—even after sixteen years. That tortuous journey is another story in itself.

  ~

  It is another matter that my political adversaries saw to it that George Fernandes and I were thwarted from telling our truth every step of the way. But the bizarre twists and turns that took place during and after the Commission, could go down in the annals of what constitutes dark and convoluted conspiracies or unforgivable ineptitude in legal procedures.

  Soli Sorabji, the nation’s Attorney General, and the late Kirit Rawal, the Additional Solicitor General, were appointed to the Inquiry Commission on behalf of the NDA government. Gopal Subramanium, an eminent lawyer who was on a retainership by major industrialists, was the Commission’s lawyer. He rose to great heights after 2004, when the UPA government came along. He was to play the role of amicus curiae. He chose to take a fee of only one rupee. One of his juniors was a certain Siddharth Agarwal. Tehelka was represented by (now prominent) lawyer Siddharth Luthra and Kavin Gulati. Lawyer Prashant Bhushan, represented First Global, the financiers of Tehelka’s sting operation. He also assisted Tehelka’s team. These dramatis personae are important in the whole story.

  My legal team consisting of Niloy Dutta, a senior lawyer from Assam who was living in Delhi because of threats from the militant ULFA (United Liberation Front of Assam), and young Ameet Nayak, lent to me by my son’s firm Trilegal, was new to me at that time but have remained dear friends long after their roles ended. George Fernandes had help from Raju Ramachandran, Upamanyu Hazarika, and Abhijat, who some years later was elected as secretary of the Delhi High Court Bar Association. I could barely afford to pay any of them and I had to stay up as an extra hand till the early hours of the morning to help them sieve through the numerous flaws in both facts and recordings found on those hundred and more tapes. I learned to operate a computer only then. I had been planning to go to computer classes for three weeks, but necessity made me learn from our office staff in half an hour flat.

  Justice Venkatswami allowed himself to be guided almost entirely by Gopal Subramanium regarding the procedures adopted by the inquiry commission. We accused had no idea what we were being accused of since no formal ‘charges’ were ever spelled out. We were not allowed to inspect the Commission’s records. We had to therefore file affidavits based on flimsy memories. No evidence was shown to us. Any lawyer would say this was not legally correct.

  We had to pay five rupees for each sheet of paper of any document emerging out of the judge’s orders. If they were to have an official stamp, the cost rose to ten rupees. It was only after I enquired from two commissions being held in the adjoining buildings of the Vigyan Bhavan and found that these are free, that we managed to protest before the judge and have this unnecessary fee waived.

  We were not allowed to watch the tapes until a united demand forced the Commission to screen them in a small room for all lawyer-representatives. There would be no rewinds, repeats or pauses. If someone needed to visit the toilet which was in another building, they would have to miss a part of the screening.

  There were hundreds of errors in the Tehelka’s transcripts. No one heeded our pleas for ensuring accuracy before questioning us. I put together a booklet of pictures, diagrams and images of forensic results pointing out various technical and factual flaws. To defuse my own anger at what had been done to us, I wrote a parody mocking the Tehelka story calling it conmen@dhamaka.com, with cartoons prepared by a friend in the media. I distributed them to every MP and all those who attended the Commission’s hearings, and the media. There was silence. They must have thought I was crazy but it gave me some relief. It formed part of my instruments of battle.

  Today, no taped evidence of any kind and particularly those made during sting operations, are given credence without sending them for forensic examination. However, I had to fight alone every inch of the way from April 2001 till early 2003 to finally have the tapes sent to be verified for authenticity.

  A significant part of this battle was when I requested and obtained time from Prime Minister Vajpayee and prominent members of his cabinet and the PMO to view my private forensic expert Milin Kapoor’s study and presentation of the many blatant manipulations, in words, sequences and attributions of conversations, visible on many of the tapes. I remember that day clearly: it was the same Sunday morning that the Congress leader Madhavrao Scindia had died in an unfortunate plane accident—30 September 2001. The Prime Minister, Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh, George Fernandes, Arun Shourie—all senior ministers, and Brajesh Mishra, the Principal Adviser to the Prime Minister, were among those who watched and listened to us in silence. In the end, I pleaded that the Attorney General be requested to forcefully argue before the Commission for forensic examination of the tapes at any laboratory, whether in India or abroad, to ensure their authenticity before we are questioned.

  Strangely, the stoic silence continued. Finally, Arun Shourie offered a solution in his typically mild manner: ‘Why don’t you go to court?’ I was too surprised and disheartened at this unhelpful comment to stay in the room much longer. I never thought that the highest in the land would reject being my last resort in a public cause concerning the need for credibility of basic evidence in any legal proceedings, especially when the reputation of its own Ministry of Defence was involved.

  I did go to the Delhi High Court immediately afterwards. After a few hearings, the judge denied my petition. Shockingly and inexplicably, he referred in his written order to various names and incidents that were not part of my case or pleas at all. This puzzled my legal team. Doggedly, I went to a Division Bench. The single judge’s obviously erroneous order was remanded for revi
sion by the Division Bench. The result was an order that expunged all the mistakes but the Bench left it to the Inquiry Commission to take a decision. The long snake you find just before you reach your goal in the board game of Snakes and Ladders had devoured me. I was back to where I started.

  Through a reliable diplomat, I obtained the contact of a highly professional private forensic team in the UK. They were regularly used by the UK’s Scotland Yard and even had a letter of commendation from the US government for a meticulous enquiry into the FBI tapes of the Waco shootout incident in the US in 1993. I telephoned London and arranged to meet an ex-policeman and forensic expert Chris Mills from this company. I carried our copies of the tapes and hung around London staying with friends while he examined them at his company. He reported that there seemed to be flaws, and the original tapes provided by Tehelka, not copies of copies, would need to be examined.

  Vasant Pandit, R.V. Pandit’s son, had helped Nanaji Deshmukh, the venerable RSS leader and social worker in his rural development projects in Chitrakoot. Vasant gave the Samata Party a cheque of five lakh rupees to cover the costs of Chris Mills’s coming to India to depose based on his initial report and opinions, at the Commission. The money covering these expenses were transferred through the RBI. However, Vasant’s name came out in The Indian Express soon, after which he suddenly started being harassed with court cases on umpteen matters not remotely connected to me. Interestingly, R.V. Pandit has been one of Vajpayee, George Sahib and Advani’s closest friends for decades. Yet no one could ever get his son out of a wholly fabricated mess which continues till today concerning supposedly illegal import of health mattresses from Japan.