‘Kingpins seduced officers with gifts’

NEW DELHI: The alleged kingpins of the War Room leak case were Ravi Shankaran, Navy Chief Admiral Arun Prakash's close relative, and Kulbhushan Parashar, his close associate. Both are navy officers who took voluntary retirement and allegedly plunged into the dark alleys of arms trading, but the CBI investigation indicates that the two were involved in much more than just arms dealing.

According to the CBI chargesheet, the two were operating like a warehouse of national secrets whose end users are not yet known specifically. Surely international arms firms were among the beneficiaries, but the more serious question is: Where did all the information on Sir Creek, India's counter strategy for Pak plans, and its entire Network Centric Warfare strategy for the next two decades land up? Have they reached Pakistan, or other foreign nations? Wherever it is, as the CBI says, they have been compromised and the country needs to rewrite these strategies.

"It has been established that for the purpose of collecting and obtaining sensitive information related to safety, security and sovereignty of the nation, Kulbhushan Parashar and Ravi Shankaran allured the serving defence officers with gifts and allurements in cash and kind,” says the chargesheet.

Parashar allegedly collected 3603 pages of classified information in a Kingston pen-drive and 3264 pages in a Jetflash pen-drive. He then destroyed the hard disk, pen drives, floppies, CDs, copies of sensitive documents, the Canon scanner-cum-copier-cum-fax and other software peripherals installed at his residence-cum-office in South Delhi as he came under the scanner. Parashar had purchased eight pen drives, but during investigation only three were recovered and the CBI was able to recover data from only two of them.

Parashar allegedly gifted cell phones, cash cards, air tickets, taxi services, cash as well as other hospitalities. "One of the mobile phones so received by him (Surve) from Kulbhushan Parashar was used by Ms Raj Rani Jaiswal with whom SL Surve was allegedly having extra-marital relations," the chargesheet says.

Commander V Rana, one of those sacked from the Navy, allegedly received substantial illegal gratification from Kulbhushan Parashar in various forms- cash, payment of phone bills, phone at home, taxis, air tickets etc.

The CBI has established that Ravi Shankaran's modus operandi to obtain "sensitive information" was "using the latest electronic gadgets in the form of digital data by using pen drives, electronic mail, scanner, fax machine, internet messaging, and voice over internet protocol using Skype software". And these included "information relating to the security and safety of the nation."

Abhishek Verma, the flamboyant son of a former Congress MP, introduced Parashar to Philip, the MD of Atlas Telecom, a UK and Canada based company of the Atlas Group of companies, engaged mainly in the supply of telecom equipment. Parashar was later appointed the Vice President (marketing) of the firm. Parashar used to organize parties on behalf of Atlas which were attended by many foreigners.