The Deve Gowda government is extremely concerned with the explosiveness of the St Kitts case, The government now realizes that if former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao is implicated in the case, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will also have to name the late Rajiv Gandhi as the prime accused beside implicating several Congress stalwarts and bureaucrats in the St Kitts conspiracy and forgery case. With the Supreme Court’s September 27 deadline for tying up the loose ends of the case nearing, attorney general Ashok Desai will have to make up his mind on ad vising the CBI to include late Rajiv Gandhi’s name in the charge sheet If Rajiv Gandhi who is no more and therefore cannot be prosecuted does figure in the charge sheet, its political ramifications will clearly be too hot to handle for the 125 day old Deve Gowda government. The Gandhi legacy is a particularly emotive issue with Congress men of most shades and anything that points the needle of suspicion towards the departed leader could be catastrophic for the Gowda Government.
Attorney General Desai has put himself in a tight spot after seeking the opinion of Bombaybased legal luminary P.R. Vakil about the merits of the St Kitts case. It is almost ten days since Vakil gave Dasai a 60 page report stating that the government had a near cast iron case for naming Rao as a co accused in the case.
Vakil apparently believes that it can be safely presumed that Rao, as the external affairs minister in the Rajiv Gandhi Cabinet, was aware of the contents of the documents relating to the bank account of Ajeya Singh (a son of V P Singh) in the Caribbean island of St Kitts. The documents turned out to be forgeries of a nonexistent account.
In his testimony to the CBI, Rao said he had advised R. K Rai, India’s consul general in New York, to authenticate the documents “‘at the behest of someone in the PMO.” (Rao told the CBI on March 26 that he did not remember the name of the person who spoke to him on behalf of the late Prime Minister, he was not aware of the contents of the documents.) It is presumed now that anything that implicates Rao will naturally drag Rajiv Gandhi’s name into its ambit, because he was the chief executive of the country and Rao was reporting to him. It is a small wonder, then, that the Deve Gowda Government and its public face in court, Attorney General Desai, are currently on the horns of a di lemma.
The CBI, on the basis of its investigations and legal advice provided by senior criminal lawyer N. Natrajan, was ready to file the charge sheet around April this year. But the government changed shortly thereafter and Deve Gowda decided to seek a fresh legal opinion. Apart from Rao, R.K. Dhawan, Satish Sharma, K.K. Tewary and ex foreign secretary S.K. Singh are among the 40 per sons who have been interrogated by the CBI in connection with the case over the last six years. Dhawan was an Officer on Special Duty in Rajiv Gandhi’s PMO and CBI says it was he who rang up Rao in New York and conveyed his boss’ wishes. K.K. Tewary, Rao’s junior in the minis try of external affairs, the prosecution contends, procured Ajeya Singh’s signatures from the records of the passport office here and in London. R.P, Joshi, a former director of the Intelligence Bureau, who was posted in London, sent the photo copy of Ajeya Singh’s signatures to Tewary in the diplomatic bag, according to the CBI, which also says that Satish Sharma, Rajiv’s backroom boy, was in touch with persons involved in the conspiracy.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 25, 1996
