Chandraswamy

NEW DELHI: The sensational St. Kitts scandal, which spanned the regimes of three former prime ministers after erupting on the nation’s conscience about 15 years ago, was set to fizzle out after a court acquitted self-styled guru Chandraswamy on Oct. 25 on charges of forgery and cheating.

A district court here acquitted Chandraswamy, the man who once packed enormous clout in New Delhi’s corridors of power, of charges of conspiring to forge documents to show that former prime minister –– then opposition Janata Dal leader –– V.P. Singh’s son Ajeya held a secret bank account in the remote Caribbean Island of St. Kitts and Nevis. Additional sessions judge Dinesh Dayal said: “No evidence is available. The accused is acquitted.”

Chandraswamy, along with his secretary K.N. Aggarwal, alias Mamaji, former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao and former minister of state for external affairs K.K. Tewari, had been charged in the case in 1996 after investigation revealed that the five had entered into criminal conspiracy to defame V.P. Singh by seeking to show, with allegedly forged documents, that he held illegal bank accounts abroad in his son’s name. Chandraswamy was the last of the accused to be cleared of the charges. Rao and Tewari were acquitted earlier and Mamaji died of prostate cancer.

A triumphant Chandraswamy said: “I am happy, but I am more happy that the name of the former prime minister, the late Rajiv Gandhi, whom the V.P. Singh government at the center had tried to drag in the case, has been cleared.”

Chandraswamy was once believed to call the shots in Indian politics and enjoyed great influence among politicians, celebrities, industrialists as well as a famous arms dealer.

Shortly after his acquittal, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) admitted that it did not have a strong case to pursue the St. Kitts legal battle any more. This was especially after the death of key accused and witnesses and the U.S. refusal to extradite arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi’s son-in-law Larry J. Kolb who was among the original people named in the case.

“The forgery was proved. But who forged it will be difficult to prove now,” said a CBI official. “There is no strength in this case now.” Those once connected with the investigations said that the refusal of the St. Kitts government to send original bank documents also made the case weak.

The case first surfaced in Aug 1989 when the Kuwait-based Arab Times reported the alleged bank account in the name of Ajeya Singh in the The First Trust Corporation. The insinuation was that his father V.P. Singh, who had then mounted a political challenge to prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and charged him with political corruption, had squirreled away illegal wealth in the remote island in his son’s name.

Subsequent media investigations, including an expose by an Indo-Asian News Service correspondent who travelled to St. Kitts, led to the revelation that “non-existent” bank accounts had been floated by some “interested persons” to tarnish the image of V.P. Singh.

When the charges were framed, the CBI had alleged that bank documents were forged to show that Ajeya Singh hadd an account in First Trust Corporation in the St. Kitts and Nevis in September 1986 and deposited $21 million in that account. After Narasimha Rao came to power in 1991, the investigations dragged till Rao demitted office in 1996. The CBI charge-sheeted Chandraswamy, Mamaji, Narasimha Rao and K.K. Tewari. No charges had been framed for Rao and Tewari by the trial court, a decision that was upheld by the high court and Supreme Court.

As for Chandraswamy and Mamaji, the judge had ordered framing of charges of criminal conspiracy, forgery, fabricating false evidence and using as genuine certain forged documents. Over the years, key players in the case have either been acquitted or have died. A key witness for the CBI, film financier Harish Chand Nahata, is also dead, as is George McLean, manager of the First Trust Corporation who was named in the first criminal case.