Source: The Sangai Express / PTI
Delhi, September 21 2009:
Former Governor and top policeman Ved Marwah has accused some "bigwigs" in the NDA Govt of having pestered him during his term as Manipur Governor in 2002 to favour a Mumbai-based business tycoon in an online lottery deal.
He said the Centre (NDA Govt) was upset with him for cancelling a contract signed by Radhabinod Koijam-led Govt with a prominent business group from Mumbai without a tender being floated or being advertised.
"There was a spate of calls from Delhi, including from some bigwigs as to why I had cancelled this contract.
I patiently explained the facts to each one of these luminaries, but it was obvious they were unhappy," the former Delhi police chief said in his latest book 'India in Turmoil' to be released on Monday.
In exclusive extracts of the book available with PTI, he said, "Overnight, I became a persona non grata in the corridors of power in Delhi and all because of taking a legally and politically correct popular decision...
As it became public knowledge in Imphal that the Centre was annoyed with me, my credibility in the state took a nose-dive".
He also accused a former BJP Chief Minister of Jharkhand of having floated a transport company in his wife's name and securing crores of rupees worth of contracts from a reputed industrial house which had a land-lease dispute pending with the state government.
Marwah also said a former Union minister in-charge of the North East Region was given the name "India's Mr 10 per cent" by the people there and how in one project in Manipur, the entire fund worth crores of rupees had been misappropriated by "corrupt politicians and administrators".
When asked if the minister was from the NDA government, he said "he was from the UPA government."
He also gives a first-hand account of the "mess-up" of the Rubaiya Sayeed kidnapping case in 1989 .
He described how as the Director General of National Security Guard he was sent to take a commando team to Srinagar by a special plane along with current National Security Advisor M K Narayanan to rescue her when the Intelligence Bureau, then led by present NSA, did not have any clue about her whereabouts.
"The abject surrender of the Indian government led to a full-fledged terrorist movement in J and K.Not learning any lesson, the mistakes were repeated in the Dorraiswamy kidnapping case in 1991," he says in his book.
Marwah, has also given an example of a young IPS officer with "political links", who ran away from the ambush scene in 2004 in Jharkhand and became untraceable for almost 12 hours, resulting in the killing of over thirty policemen of a 150-strong police party led by this officer who was "rewarded" with a plum posting rather than being taken to task.