Chandraswamy caught on tape CBI moves in

Harinder Baweja and Jamshed Khan
New Delhi

he CBI is handling a bomb. A tape which records controversial god man Chandraswamy bandying the name of a senior Supreme Court Justice to threaten Haryana bureaucrat Sanjiv Kumar, a whistle blower who has filed a case against Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala. “The Justice is in the pay roll of Chautala…you don’t know what kind of a vindictive person he is. He can ruin your career. You should compromise with him,’’ the Swamy can be heard saying on tape.

Given the sensitivity of the case, especially because it involves the highest court, the CBI took Chief Justice VN Khare into confidence before submitting a copy of the tape to the bench hearing Sanjiv Kumar’s petition. The CBI has also matched the voice on tape with Chandraswamy’s voice at the Central Forensic Science Laboratory.

An upright and honest officer, Sanjiv’s saga began when he was chosen by Chautala to head the Primary Education Department. On taking over, he came across the strange sight of a cupboard swathed in bandages. His predecessor, Rajni Sekhri Sibal, had locked and sealed a stack of lists containing names of 3,206 teachers who had been selected on merit. Sanjiv had been handpicked for a reason: Chautala wanted the original merit lists to be replaced with duplicate lists. But like his predecessors, who were transferred because they refused to succumb, Sanjiv put up stiff resistance after he was summoned to the chief minister’s residence and the duplicate lists forcibly thrust into his car.

He decided then to go back to his office and have the seals removed from the cupboard. He also called in a six-member committee from the education department and got them to sign each page of the merit list. The smart thing that Sanjiv had the presence of mind to do was to have the entire process filmed. He made the original lists public. Soon after, he stacked the duplicate lists into sacks and ran for his life after putting in a leave application. Hanging on to the duplicate list and keeping them safely were the only way Sanjiv could prove his case. There were 19 sets of lists – one from each district – and Sanjiv, sure that he was going to expose the corrupt system, then went on to look for 19 different safe places in which to hide them. One set, for example, was given to Buta Singh, a poor farmer in Punjab. Buta and Sanjiv had often eaten out of the same plate at their guruji’s ashram in Jallandhar and there was no way Chautala and his men would ever be pointed in that direction. Soon, all 19 lists were similarly tucked away in hidden places.

Moving from one secret place to another, Sanjiv finally knocked on the doors of the Supreme Court and filed a case directly against Chautala. Since most of the complaints had been so carefully documented and filmed, the Court ordered the CBI to conduct an enquiry and return in six months, not with a report but with an FIR. That was a moment of triumph for the bureaucrat who had been living the life of a nomad – he and his wife in one city and his children in another. Threatening calls followed him wherever he went. An anonymous caller once also told him that they knew which school his children were studying in. Sanjiv was worried but never deterred. The duplicate lists in safe custody were his weapons to take the fight forward.

Chautala had actually gone to great lengths to make the duplicate list look like the original. Procedure demands that each district list be signed by a three-member committee comprising Class 1 officers. As many as 57 officers actually went ahead and put their seal on a list they knew was being forged because before that they had also penned their signatures on the original merit list. Candidates willing to pay Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh found their way into the duplicate lists. “I knew I was walking through fire but I had to blow the whistle,’’ says Sanjiv who has been suspended by the Chautala government for not sending in his leave applications on time. In a bid to put pressure on him, the government has also slapped several cases against him.

He refuses to relent and as he pursues his case, the pressure is only increasing, but the Court has granted him four armed policemen to ensure his safety. But that didn’t stop Chandraswamy’s men from calling him and advising him to pay a visit to the ashram, not once but twice. The second time, two young prospective primary teachers were also present and like Sanjiv, they too were asked to back off. “He told us not to press the case in court and said he would get us jobs instead,” Vijendra Dutt told Tehelka. Ironically, Dutt’s name figures in the duplicate list and his contention in court is that as far as he is concerned, the list is valid because it has been signed and attested by the three-member committee. Dutt admits to the fact that he would have had to shell out between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh for the favour.

Chautala declined to comment saying the matter was subjudice. Chandra-swamy too refused to comment on the tape despite repeated attempts but he will not be able to do the same once it is played out in the Supreme Court. He, in fact, even kept the CBI hanging for a while when they wanted to call on him to record a voice sample saying he could only meet them in a month’s time. The investigating agency, however, found a sample and got it forensically examined.

Sanjiv continues to labour with his case. He has not got his salary in months but there are good Samaritans who make him smile occasionally, like JC Chaudhary at Akash Institute where he admitted his daughter for medical coaching. Chaudhary waived the fee and gave him a 99 percent discount on the Rs 62,500 fee. “Moments like these strengthen my resolve,’’ he says. The people are clearly on the side of those who dare to take on the mighty. Soon, Sanjiv hopes to have the judiciary’s stamp too.