When the questions became too hot to handle for Batcha

Key figure’s death fuelled stench in telecom spectrum scam probe

Theories abound on the controversial suicide of Sadiq Batcha, a close aide to the now-jailed former Union telecom minister, A Raja, after being intensely interrogated in the telecom spectrum allocation scandal.

Batcha was found hanging at his residence here on March 16, and the speculation, then and now, was whether it was a suicide or, somehow, a murder to silence him.

The man himself left behind a note on how Raja did not deserve the treatment he got. He also blamed the media for all the negative publicity and said he could not withstand the pressure. He also wrote how he wanted his family to carry on after his death.

Under intense public suspicion, the state government, run by Raja’s DMK party decided to have the probe into the death transferred from the local police to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

For the record, the autopsy report on Batcha says the cause was asphyxia. In a much-commented development, V Dekal, the forensic doctor who did the medical examination, said he was resigning from government service, within days of giving his report.

He had always, said Dekal, intended to contest the Assembly elections, due from this month, and had asked to be allowed to resign weeks before the Batcha death. His father was a DMK member. The state government has said it is yet to accept the resignation.

HAWKER TO MAGNATE
Just who was Batcha? He hails from Raja's own home town, Perambalur in central Tamil Nadu, 50 km from Trichy. His is a rags-to-riches story. He used to, not so long before, make a living by selling sarees and matresses door to door, on a bicycle. He then got into the real estate business, which is when he got introduced to Raja, in the late 1990s.

Batcha floated a realty company called Green House Promoters, in which Raja’s wife, brother and nephew were directors. It is alleged, and CBI is probing this, that the company was a conduit for spectrum allocation bribe money. The company was established in August 2004, a few weeks after Raja was made a Union minister, on his party high command’s nomination.

In 2007, once Raja became the telecom minister, Green House opened a branch in Singapore. The CBI is investigating whether foreign exchange and Reseve Bank guidelines were followed in doing so.

Green House reportedly has a stake in Genex Exim Ventures Pvt Ltd, linked to Swan Telecom, which had planned to invest 49 per cent in Green House for Rs 1,000 crore. Raja's brother, A Kaliaperumal, is a director and nephew P R Paramesh Kumar is joint MD of Green House.

Raja's nephew, R Sridhar and nieces R Anandabhuvaneswari and R Santhanalakshmi, jointly hold 45 per cent shares in Kovai Shelters Promoters India Pvt Ltd, which has stake in Swan Telecom. R Sridhar has 15 per cent shareholding in the company.

FIRST FAMILY TAINTED
The scam had led to unprecedented questioning of the wife and daughter of DMK supremo M Karunanidhi, octogenarian chief minister of Tamil Nadu fighting hard to be re-elected to power. On March 11, five days before Batcha was found dead, Karunanidhi's wife, Dayalu Ammal, and her daughter and Rajya Sabha member, M Kanimozhi, were interrogated in connection with the investigation into the spectrum allocation money trail.

The related allegations are of siphoning of some of the funds to Kalaignar TV, in which Dayalu Ammal and Kanimozhi hold 60 and 20 per cent stake, respectively. The Tamil channel is controlled by the DMK’s first family and it is alleged to have been the recipient of Rs 214 crore from Cineyug Communications, also linked to the spectrum allocation for Swan Telecom. CBI investigation has led to indictments of Swan’s heads.

Whether CBI will be able to draw these intriguing strands into a clear web of support for a convincing story of what happened remains to be seen.