Jain Hawala case(then corruption charges were taken very seriously and bigwigs were chargesheeted.but evidences were weak,so they couldn't get convic)

Jain Hawala case


Jain Hawala Case has so far put the career of 24 politicians in Jam. So far India was famous for letting off the politicians who were charged with accepting bribes. But the recent case has shown that even politicians are not spared in India. While corruption in India is as ancient and solidly grounded as the Taj Mahal or Qutab Minar, this sordid episode marks the first time in independent India's nearly 50-year existence that members of the government or parliament have been charged or hauled into court for alleged criminal acts.

"It is like a cyclonic storm in INDIA'S politics" says one delhi resident.The hawala, or illegal foreign exchange affair, has captured headlines and the public agenda as India prepares for a general election, expected in April. Other scandals followed: government purchases of sugar and locomotives; bidding for state telecommunications rights, a 2 crore rupees dollar loan to Rao's youngest son; and Rao's own alleged involvement as foreign minister in a 1989 forgery designed to smear a challenger to Rajiv Gandhi.

The Jain Hawala Case has shown that corruption has now taken the front seat in India.Panja, Shiv Shankar, Sinha and Vora discharged in Jain hawala case Former Union ministers Ajit Kumar Panja, P Shiv Shankar, former Uttar Pradesh governor Motilal Vora, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha and the Jain brothers were discharged by Special Judge V B Gupta in the Rs 650 million Jain hawala case in New Delhi on Wednesday.

The judge said there was no prima facie evidence against the accused which could be converted into legal evidence.With this 20 accused in the hawala case have been discharged by the Delhi high court and the trial court. These include Bharatiya Janata Party president L K Advani and former Union ministers V C Shukla, Arjun Singh, Madhavrao Scindia, N D Tiwari and R K Dhawan and former Delhi chief minister Madan Lal Khurana.

Allowing the petitions by Advani and Shukla challenging the special judge's order, Justice Shamim had ruled in his 70-page judgment that the Jain diaries could not be converted into legal evidence against them.

Allowing similar petitions by the Jain brothers, S K Jain, N K Jain and B R Jain and their employee, J K Jain, the high court quashed the proceedings against them too. The said evidence is of such a nature which cannot be converted into a legal evidence against the petitioners," the high court had observed.

The quashing of charges against Advani and Shukla by the high court triggered a spate of petitions with the trial court by other politicians involved in the hawala case, seeking exoneration.

On May 16 last, Judge Gupta discharged Khurana and the four Jains, stating that the Central Bureau of Investigation had failed to produce any evidence which could be converted into ''legal evidence'' to frame charges against the accused.

Even as the government was considering the CBI request to file a special leave petition with the Supreme Court challenging the high court order, Judge Gupta discharged Arjun Singh, Tiwari, Scindia, Dhawan and the Jains on May 28.

Citing the high court order, he said, ''When the diaries, notebooks and loose sheets cannot be legal evidence in one case arising out of the same first information report, then certainly it cannot be legal evidence in the present cases based on the same FIR.

Courtesy --- KIRANMAYI

Wednesday, September 16, 1998

Which Jain? What Hawala?

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Once there were 35 charge-sheets filed in the Jain hawala scam. Today, there are just two cases pending those against the Janata Dal's Sharad Yadav and the Congress's Balram Jakhar. Once, the much-hyped CBI probe into the Rs 65-crore scam dominated the news headlines, as the names of some of the country's best-known leaders figured in it. Today, it causes a desultory yawn at best.
The courts have systematically questioned the evidence the CBI has brought against the accused and pulled it up for not doing enough in a case that has dragged on for more than seven years.

Worse, since the CBI had made the Jain brothers S.K. Jain and N.K. Jain the co-accused in the case, along with the politicians, when the latter got acquitted, the brothers were also let off the hook. The CBI has, however, filed a revision petition in the Delhi High Court seeking to continue with the cases against the Jains.

Clearly, the CBI has not covered itself with glory in its handling of these investigations. According to someexperts, including lawyers and sources in the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the CBI had no case in the first place and had acted in a politically motivated manner. They feel that the CBI had no business to investigate cases under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) and should have left it to the ED.

There are others like journalist Vineet Narain of Kalchakra one of the petitioners in the case who feel the CBI has made a hash of it.``It was just a drama and nothing else. The CBI did no investigation, not even a preliminary one,'' says Narain. He also points out that although affidavits were repeatedly filed to inform the Court of the CBI's lapses, no cognisance was taken of the fact. Fumes Narain: ``Now they say that there was no evidence. But then no efforts were made to gather evidence.''

Senior advocate V.K. Ohri agrees. ``The CBI killed the case. In the normal course, raids are conducted, searches are made. Nothing of this sort was done. Even the statements were not recorded. On the contrary,the CBI gave protection to the accused, citing Section 22(3) of the Constitution under which an accused cannot be forced to implicate himself by giving evidence against himself,'' alleges Ohri.

He feels the case should have been handed over to the ED. First, because the CBI has no power to make arrests under the FERA. Second, the statements of the accused given to the CBI are not admissible as evidence in court. If the statements were made before the ED, it would have been a different story, since they are admissible. Ohri even charges that the CBI had acted in a ``negligent manner with mischievous intentions'' and that the agency had ``succumbed to money and political power''.

However, a former CBI director differs. ``There was no evidence to begin with. Especially after the Supreme Court ruled in Advani's case in 1997 that the diaries were not sufficient evidence, the CBI had no case. But the CBI was forced to prosecute or else it would have been blamed for not acting,'' the officer says.

But Narainargues that the CBI did not even look into the terrorist angle and the possible links of politicians with two arrested Kashmiri militants who had inadvertently opened the Pandora's box, leading to the investigations.

Columnist Rajinder Puri, the other petitioner in the case, feels the crucial terrorist angle was deliberately overlooked. ``After all, it did come to light that hawala money was being passed on to militants and secessionists. Why isn't that being probed? Why isn't the BJP demanding an inquiry? Nobody is objecting. It is a conspiracy of silence,'' he says.

The case broke out on March 1991, with the arrest of two Kashmiri militants, Shahbuddin Ghauri and Ashfaq Hussain Lone, in March 1991. They had, in turn, led the CBI to high-profile hawala operators Shambhu Dayal Sharma and Moolchand Shah. It was the testimony of the hawala operators that led to the unfolding of the case.

Ghauri and Lone's complicity proved that militants were involved in international hawala deals. Ghauri who was doing aPhD at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University at the time was believed to be the ``international militancy coordinator'' of the Hizbul Mujahideen. Lone was also suspected to be a member of the group.

Investigations showed that the duo had links with militant groups all over the world, including many in Pakistan, Canada and the United States. Some cheques of Pakistani origin and a bank draft of over Rs 15 lakh were recovered from them. On July 23, 1998, the two militants were convicted under the TADA and FERA. Sentenced to seven years' imprisonment, they were released last month as they had already been in jail for about that period.The hawala operators, Sharma and Shah, told the agency during interrogation that they had been working for the Jain brothers, N.K. Jain and S.K. Jain.

This led to the immediate arrest of the Jain brothers. In his 1995 confession, S.K. Jain alleged that he had paid a number of politicians, including the then Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao. He also claimed that the names of allthose who had received money from him were recorded in the now famous ``Jain diaries''.

However, the CBI's entire case against the prominent personalities cutting across party lines named in these diaries collapsed in court. Special CBI Judge V.B. Gupta held that none of the statements and confessions of the accused was admissible in court since they were given to the CBI. He also stated that he found there was nothing that could be converted into legal proof against the accused, and that the crucial diaries were ``inadmissible'' evidence. Since then, the cases have gone out the door, one by one.

The political fallout of the case was considerable. While senior BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani had to resign his membership of Parliament and probably lost his chances of becoming Prime Minister during the BJP's earlier 13-day reign Madan Lal Khurana quit as Delhi's chief minister.

S.R. Bommai resigned as the Janata Dal president, Sharad Yadav refrained from joining the United Front government and N.D.Tiwari lost the Congress ticket. Among the others accused were Kalpnath Rai, Madhavrao Scindia, Balram Jakhar, Arjun Singh, V.C. Shukla, Ajit Panja, C.K. Jaffer Sharief, Buta Singh, S.R. Bommai, Yashwant Sinha, Devi Lal and Arif Mohammad Khan. Each one of them, in their differing ways, paid a price for their alleged involvement.

Bureaucrats too got their share of notoriety. Chargesheeted officials included former Coal India Ltd chairman M.P. Narayanan; the chairman of Central Electricity Authority, R.K. Narayan; former Gujarat chief secretary H.K. Khan; and former National Thermal Power Corporation chairman P.S. Bami.As for the Jains, they are still in trouble but with the Income-Tax Department. They have a tax liability of Rs 79 crore for five assessment years and their appeal is pending with the I-T tribunal in Nagpur. They were supposed to also pay a huge amount as interest, but the Appeals Commissioner recently waived it, although sources within the I-T Department reveal that an appeal against thiscancellation has been filed.

While the Jain Hawala case turned out to be something of a farce, it had had at least one important fallout the Supreme Court judgement on the autonomy of investigating agencies. It was this verdict that directed the Government to confer statutory status to the Central Vigilance Commission and to give the body regulatory powers over the CBI and ED.

Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.