Broadening the Spectrum of 2G scam

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There is another shocking revelation in the media, related to Telecom licensing that the Home Ministry had a mole in its internal security department, who was passing on classified information to outsiders. The further probing of this issue brings to light the beneficiaries include telecom companies who had benefited from critical information he passed on to them on the issue of number portability of mobile phones. The arrested IAS officer,  Ravi Inder Singh a Director in internal security arm of MHA, was also handling matters pertaining to BlackBerry's encoded services. A Kolkata-based businessman Vineet Kumar, who was allegedly acting as a broker on behalf of Mr.Singh, was also taken into custody.


Police submitted at the court that Mr.Singh was using four mobile phones out of which one mobile connection was on his name and rest of the three numbers were procured through fictitious identities. The officer had secreted those three mobile phones and stopped using them on November 16 after he came to know from Sanjeev Arora, a Vodafone company manager, that calls were intercepted on those phones. This manager may also be brought under the ambit of the investigation. People who have to nail the wrong doers have been doing the fundamentally wrong things.

Ravi Inder Singh is accused of having links with public persons and mediators and was misusing his official position for his personal gains. He did not stay in his official quarters but was residing in a guest house in posh Greater Kailash area of south Delhi. The investigating agency submitted before the court that Singh’s wife who is a homemaker, without any known/declared source of income, had opened an A/C in Bank of Maharashtra in which she has mentioned the guest house’s address as her residential address. Rs.21 lakhs were deposited in that account.  Who paid for this extravagance? Vineet, the broker known as businessman!

Also, Singh is said to have had the pleasure of being entertained with the fair brigade in lieu of his 'services'.

Well, the RIM (Blackberry company) had distanced itself from this man. The tainted officer is expected to speak a lot to the Police, which might spell trouble for many of the corporate and political behemoths. The slapping factor here is that the companies involved are telecom businesses, and the information leaked were of importance to telecom. Would there be a link between this and the Spectrum-gate? We may find some, in the course of free & fair investigation.

There is another scam that hit the heads and headlines couple of days ago. The LIC HF, PNB and other institutions have been involved in a millions of rupees worth (estimated at Rs 42750 cr) cash for loans offer from the realty corporations. Some top officials of the involved financial institutions and banks were arrested, with a promise of more to come.

Here we need to look at it in a multi-dimensional way.

• The Spectrum licenses were given away at throw away prices to realty firms, overlooking the telecom firms. Mediatrixes were involved in this case.
• The telecom companies have been beneficiaries of Ravi Inder Singh's secrets for sex and cash scam. A mediator was involved in this case.
• The corporate home loan for cash scam involved realty firms and a firm Money Matters Financial Services Ltd. acting as mediator. 

Given these three scams have a couple of dimensions in common like middlemen, realty and telecom sectors (not obviously though), the investigative agencies should try to ascertain whether there are any connections between these three separate looking scams, to find out a probably mammoth plot to loot the public money. Nothing could be ruled out now. Investigating the possible inter-relation of these scams would not cause any harm as the basic thumb rule of any criminal investigation is "Disbelieve the obvious". The obvious picture is that these three are separate scandals.

A shrewd investigation would bring out all the hidden truths, provided we don't have any extra-constitutional meanderings as in the case of Bofors fame Q, to get away kinsmen and loyal partners in crime .

People who are trained and paid to ensure right doings, do all the wrongs for some extra bucks and greedy f**ks. This raises questions not on the training system of the Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy, but on the basic moral lessons right from elementary schools. We don't have moral educators, aka grand parents, at home nowadays thanks to the nuclear family system. We are so concerned about the good marks shown in school report cards, than good marks made in the society. Unless we shed the ambivalence towards morality, we have to live with such highly educated criminals at the high offices of the nation. Vande Matharam!