High court notice on petition claiming CBI going slow on HDW probe

The Delhi high court on Monday issued notice for August 5 to the Union home ministry, the Cabinet secretary and the Central Bureau of Investigation on a petition contending that the CBI was deliberately going slow on investigations into the Rs 4.2 billion HDW submarine deal.

Petitioner B L Wadhera informed the court that the agency was ''ignoring'' evidence implicating then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.

A division bench consisting of Acting Chief Justice Mahinder Narain and Justice S K Mahajan directed the respondents to file their replies within three weeks on the public interest petition filed by Dr Wadhera. Counsel Sandeep Aggarwal accepted notice on behalf of the Cabinet secretary and the home secretary.

Dr Wadhera contended in his petition that the CBI had done little since registering a first information report in March 1990 about alleged kickbacks of more than Rs 300 million in the Rs 4.2 billion deal signed by India with Germany for the purchase of submarines.

Praying that the court direct the CBI to file a progress report on the investigations, the petitioner added that the agency should be told to pursue its probe with ''diligence and speed''.

The CBI FIR regarding the 1987 HDW deal named former defence secretary and Sikkim governor S K Bhatnagar, former additional secretary, defence, S S Sidhu, former additional financial adviser in the defence ministry B S Ramaswamy, then vice-chief of naval staff, Vice-Admiral Schunker, Captain M Kondaath and industrialist Gopichand Ahuja as accused. It said money was paid to them through certain Swiss banks.

However, there were indications that the ''bribes'' actually went through these officers to Rajiv Gandhi in the country, Dr Wadhera said.

He submitted that ''vital information'' regarding the ''actual recipient'' of the seven per cent ''commission'' in the deal had surfaced during former prime minister V P Singh's in-camera deposition on November 13 1996 before the Jain commission, probing the conspiracy angle behind the assassination of Gandhi.

Dr Wadhera sought to submit to the bench a hand-written note on V P Singh's ''deposition'', which he said was made in his presence, but the judges refused to see it, saying that the meaning of in-camera proceedings should not be diluted.

According to the petitioner, Singh's in-camera statement on oath related to his conversation with Gandhi regarding a telex message received from the Indian ambassador in Germany, which said that HDW was refusing to reduce the price of the submarines as a seven per cent ''commission'' had been paid to Indian agents and middlemen.

Stating that all this information was present on certain files, Dr Wadhera averred that the CBI was ''not touching these''.