The Union government yesterday told the Supreme Court that it may have to consider ordering fresh probe into the Indian Bank scam by a new team of investigators after the apex court expressed its total dissatisfaction with the status of investigations which it said appeared to be practically at a standstill since it began months ago.
Solicitor-general Santhosh Hegde appearing for the government told a three-judge bench monitoring the investigations on a public interest petition moved by Janata Party leader Subramaniam Swamy. The court has handed over the case to senior counsel Anil Divan as `friend of the court, and Swamy is practically out of the picture.
But since the court is dissatisfied with the investigations the government has no other way except to have the whole case reviewed by a different set of persons because the present team had given their opinion that some of the cases cannot be proceeded with, Hegde told the judges.
On their part, the judges reminded solicitor-general Santosh Hegde that Prime Minister Vajpayee, while he was in the opposition, had described the Indian Bank affair as 10 times bigger than the urea scam and 20 times more serious than the Bofors controversy. They said that nothing has moved since March though the new government has come to power.
Faced with this volley of adverse remarks, the solicitor general submitted that the government might have to consider ordering a fresh investigation into the bank scam with a new team.
The crucial point was the closure report filed by the team regarding the bad accounts of the bank, including the one at its Singapore branch. The solicitor-generals remark that documents could not be obtained from Singapore attracted severe remarks from the judges.
Another point which agitated the judges was the loans advanced to a shipping firm for the purchase of a non-existent ship. This case was also closed for want of evidence. The judges compared this to the urea scam in which not a grain of urea had arrived though millions of dollars were siphoned off.
Hegde assured the court that the government was determined to take the case to its logical conclusion both in regard to the investigations and the follow-up action.
Several persons closely linked to the then ruling Tamil Maanila Congress party are alleged to have been given huge unsecured loans by the bank which had run bad. The overdrafts were sanctioned when M Gopalakrishnan was the chairman and managing director of the bank.
The court asked the government to file its reply to the points raised by July 13 so that it could hear the case on July 21.
