The more things change...

 

 

What you see on this page is just a glimpse of the overwhelming manner in which the media in India has highlighted The Sunday Indian expose on how a fictitious person with the photo of terrorist Ajmal Kasab obtained a driver’s licence; and how a fictitious person with the photo of mafia don and 1993 Mumbai blasts accused Abu Salem obtained a PAN card from the Income Tax department. No doubt, this should be a moment of satisfaction. But really, this is more a moment of anguish at the manner in officials in both the private and the government sector have reacted to the startling and dangerous revelations.

A senior corporate communications official of Bharti Airtel advised our telecom beat correspondent to ‘do more meaningful’ stories. He also stressed that a driver’s licence with the photo of Kasab is proof enough of identity and address for a company like Airtel to issue a mobile phone number. In fact, the response from Bharti Airtel suggests that The Sunday Indian is creating false identities using photoshop and cooking up stories for publicity. Of course, the same official does forget to mention that the current address given in the application form is the house of Nithari murder accused Mohinder Singh Pandher. Or, does he mean to say that the law doesn’t require Airtel to even bother to verify the current address of an applicant just because a driver’s licence from another town and city is attached? Of course, The Sunday Indian must put it on record that at a time when even the Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal is pre-occupied with the planned merger between his company and the South African MTN, the concerned official still found time to respond to our queries.

Kotak Mahindra Bank, of course, did not even find the time to reply to our queries. What the bank has done is arguably far more serious than what Airtel has done. It allowed a fictitious man with a PAN card carrying the photo of Abu Salem to open a savings account. The bank did not even bother to insist that the man opening the account be present. The bank did not bother to verify the address or identity of the ‘account holder’. The bank allowed the ‘younger brother’ (as the reporter introduced himself) of the fictitious person to operate the account, deposit Rs 15,000 and subsequently withdraw Rs 8,000. Of course, along the way, it promptly issued a cheque book and a debit card to the non-existent person. Till the time of going to press, there was no response from Kotak Mahindra Bank despite e-mails and persistent phone calls. The daily newspaper Deccan Herald did a story on the TSI investigation to which Kotak Mahindra Bank officials replied that they are “carrying out extensive investigations”. You can well guess how serious they are about the investigation since they have not even bothered to contact the reporter who has all the details and proof of how ‘Abu Salem’ opened and operated a bank account. The response from the Reserve Bank of India has been classically bureaucratic. G. Raghuraj, Deputy General Manager, Department of Communication of the central bank responded to our official query and request for a response by saying, “ I have forwarded your queries to the concerned department. Will reply back as soon as I get a response.” There has been no response, despite the serious national security implications that are involved in the issue.

But not everything is so disheartening and disappointing. At the time of going to press, The Sunday Indian received a fax from the office of the Transport Officer, Agra Division requesting us to provide details of how the Mathura licensing authority issued a driver’s license with the photo of Ajmal Kasab. Within a day of the story coming out, there was a storm in Lucknow with the transport Chief Secretary Pankaj Agarwal initiating immediate investigations and dispatching a team of officials to Mathura. The fax request sent to the magazine is clearly a result of that. There are credible reports that the licensing officer Jagdish Rawat-who issued and verified the licence with the photo of Ajmal Kasab has been suspended. The fax from transport authorities in Agra clearly suggests that they will initiate further action against him after obtaining details from the magazine and the reporter. Senior leaders of major political parties like the Congress and the BJP in Uttar Pradesh have unanimously condemned this as a serious act by ‘anti-national’ renegades and traitors and demanded immediate and stern action against the alleged culprits.

Just in case you had missed the previous story, here is what The Sunday Indian investigation did: it spent less than Rs 50,000 to obtain legal driving licences, lease deeds, mobile phone connections, PAN cards and savings bank accounts of fictitious people with crystal clear photos of terrorists and gangsters like Ajmal Kasab and Abu Salem. The main purpose behind the investigation was to indicate to national security authorities how easy it would be for a bunch of terrorists to sneak into India and become ‘Indian’ citizens-thanks to the greed and negligence of both public and private sector officials. The ghastly terrorist episode of 26/11 and the many other terror attacks before that have repeatedly shown how vulnerable India is to such mayhem and destruction. Our purpose was also to examine if internal security procedures and mechanisms had been improved after 26/11 or not.

This investigation clearly shows that nothing much has changed in India. Of course, the magazine has submitted all relevant documents to the authorities concerned, including the Central Bureau of Investigation. Our hope is that this would act as an honest wake-up call and prompt the authorities to plug these glaring loopholes before another 26/11 happens. Like you, we too can only hope.