A jet propelled by Don Ibrahim
An exclusive extract from Josy Josephs book on Dawoods hold over Indian business and the questionable rise of Jet Airways
Josy Joseph
Investigative journalist Josy Josephs book A Feast of Vultures: The Hidden Business of Democracy in India reveals that intelligence agencies had given inputs of links between mafia don Dawood Ibrahim and Jet Airways promoter Naresh Goyal in the early 2000s. Many notes were sent to then deputy PM L.K. Advani, but nothing was doneeven after the government was shattered by the Kandahar hijack. In fact, soon after the hijack, Goyal was given security clearance for Jet. The exclusive extract here shows the hold Dawood has over Indian business, the questionable rise of Jet Airways and the politicians who benefited from it.
Intelligence Bureau chief K.P. Singh and his senior colleague, the joint director Anjan Ghosh, took an elevator down North Block to an official vehicle waiting in the basement on a summer day in 2002. A short distance away, at the circular building housing the houses of Parliament, members were agitated over a letter Ghosh had written a few months earlier.
It was a single-page note to Sangita Gairola, joint secretary at the Union ministry of home affairs (MHA), saying that his agency had confirmed information of intermittent contacts between Naresh Goyal and underworld dons, Chhota Shakeel and Dawood Ibrahim, to settle financial issues. There is strong suspicion that parts of Goyals investments may have accrued through the help of underworld groups, prominently headed by Dawood and Chhota Shakeel.
Ghosh further alleged that Goyal and Jet Airways had been steady recipients of large dubious investments originating from Gulf sheikhs. Naresh Goyals bonhomie and close business links with the Shaikhs have been known for over two decades. These connections are believed to have been used repeatedly not only to get direct investments, but also to get a lot of tainted Indian money laundered and recycled into business in India. Much of this kind of money is generated through smuggling, extortion and similar illegal practices, the letter said.
The letter of December 12, 2001, emerged in the media suddenly and caused an uproar. At the next session of parliament, there were vehement demands from members across parties to know the truth. One of the members, Raju Parmar, had asked a starred question in Rajya Sabha, which the home minister had to stand up and give a verbal answer to, and not just table a written reply. To a starred question, there could be instant supplementary questions that the minister had to answer. Parmars question was listed for May 7, the morning on which K.P. Singh and Ghosh were hurrying up to the Parliament building.
Waiting for the two senior IB officials was Indias then deputy prime minister and home minister, L.K. Advani, whose public discourses frequently revolved around the theme of how closely Indian politics was linked to the underworld. The BJP, as well as Advani, had always taken a tough position on the issue. Advani listened patiently as the two officials told him about the evidence they had of Goyals links with the underworld. In recent months, they had at least three telephone intercepts of his conversations with Dawood and Shakeel, the officials said, adding that there was other evidence too, according to one of the officials present at the meeting.
Advani looked shaken and determined after the meeting, the official said. He was clear that this could not go on. I thought Jet Airways would be shut down in a matter of days, the official said to me over a decade later. By the time I met him, sometime in 2014, Jet Airways had become a flourishing international airline, Goyal a darling of politicians and civil servants, and Advani a pale shadow of his once formidable, divisive self. One of his political pupils, Narendra Modi, would soon be the one steering the BJP to a more aggressive and popular phase.
As head of the interior security ministry, Advani was second only to prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in the tumultuous years between 1998 and 2004, during which India tested nuclear devices, fought a limited war with Pakistan and had to deal with the repercussions of two major terrorist attacks: the hijack of a passenger aircraft and an attack on the Parliament building. Indian political rhetoric has always been shrill on the issue of terrorism, but despite decades of struggling with it, the country has no robust responses in place to deal with non-state actors.
On January 31, 2000, exactly a month after the IC-814 hijack, civil aviation secretary Ravindra Gupta chaired a meeting on the issue of security clearance for air operators. In attendance were four senior officials, including Sangita Gairola (to whom Ghosh had later written the letter linking Jet Airways to the underworld). She told the meeting that, in the light of the suspected underworld links of East West Airlines and the bizarre incident of the arms drops in Purulia in West Bengala Latvian AN-26 aircraft flew over India undetected and dropped several hundred AK-47 rifles and more than a million rounds of ammunition on December 17, 1995security agencies had already tightened the security clearance mechanism. The ghost of IC-814 haunted the meeting, but nobody mentioned it, at least according to the official minutes. One of the key questions was which ministry should be the nodal agency for providing security clearance to air operators.
On March 25, 2000, Gairola wrote to the civil aviation ministry, conveying her ministrys comments to the questions raised at the meeting. Paramount was that the authority empowered to give security clearance would be the ministry of home affairs and that security clearance would be required at every stage, such as the induction of new directors to an operators board.
Around this time, Mesco Airlines sought permission to induct two new directors to its board. V.P. Bhatia, an undersecretary in the home ministry, wrote to the civil aviation ministry denying permission, as the two were under investigation by the CBI for forgery and falsification of accounts. In the case of the Delhi Flying Club board too, Bhatia wrote refusing security clearance to Congress party leader Satish Sharma, a close associate of the Gandhi family, because of criminal cases against him. The NDA government was sending out a clear signal: it was not willing to compromise national security, especially in civil aviation.
On March 8, 2000, the civil aviation ministry sent the details of the reconstituted board of directors of Jet Airways to Advani. It included eight non-resident Indians and five foreigners. The home ministry under AdvaniIron Man to his followers, known for his firm stand on issuessat on it for months, even though the civil aviation ministry kept shooting off reminders. The government had given several assurances to Parliament over questions from members regarding Jet Airways, and that too was weighing on him. On January 4, 2002, civil aviation secretary A.H. Jung wrote to his counterpart in the home ministry, Kamal Pande, about the several reminders they had sent on the issue. He pointed out that Jet continues to operate as scheduled airline, without proper security clearance for their reconstituted board.
At the end of three years, IB chief K.P. Singh gave a strange twist to the entire case. He claimed his agency had earlier agreed to give Jet Airways security clearance because nothing specifically adverse was available at that time either against the airlines or its directors on the records of the IB and the RAW. He wrote to the home ministry: Whatever information has since emerged about Jet Airways or its owner Naresh Goyal from RAW and other sources does not seem to be of the nature that would justify the withdrawal of security clearance earlier given to the airlines. That put an end to intelligence inquiries into Jet Airwayss dubious funds and its promoters links to Dawood.
These exchanges between the various departments have remained buried in government files for years, and would have been there forever, had not a contact of mine handed them over to me at great personal risk.
A handful of officers in the security establishment had spent a significant part of their professional lives tracking Naresh Goyal, the origins of his business, his questionable business deals (and those of many of his friends) across the political spectrum and the underworld. With each change of government, these officials thought tough action would be taken. But Goyal continued to flourish.
Singhs note omitted no facts. Before absolving Goyal, he said that the Jet Airways owner appeared to have earned his wealth through smuggling and other illegitimate means and that the airlines was probably investigated for FERA [Foreign Exchange Regulation Act] violations. Singh also pointed out that Goyal had in the past been accused of adopting unfair business tactics to undermine rival airlines, such as purchasing of union leaders and exploiting political connections. Such tactics are, however, not uncommon in a highly competitive business milieu and while such traits reflect unfavourably on his professional ethics, they do not impinge on national security, Singh wrote.
His note referred to the input given a few months earlier, detailing Goyals links with the Dawood gang. It added that the inputs were mainly procured from the RAW and that the intelligence agency had indicated their inability to further develop the information already given by them except to say that Goyal had earned his wealth through smuggling and other illegitimate means. Singh didnt mention the IBs own intercepts of talk between the Dawood gang and Goyalintercepts that his own agency had earlier reported to the government.
Curiously enough, the home ministryeven Advaniraised no objections, though it was only months earlier the home minister stood in Parliament to assure the house of appropriate action.
Singhs letter contradicted what Anjan Ghosh had said a few months earlier. It was a simple case, and there was no doubt about what the ministrys position should have been, one of the officials who dealt with the case told me.
On the IB chiefs cue, the home ministry gave up its authority to issue security clearance and instead left it to the civil aviation ministry. Of all the records I have gone through regarding security clearances for private air operators, Jet Airwayss is the only case where the home ministry gave up this right.
Mukesh Mittal, a director in the home ministry, wrote to the civil aviation ministry that they had found certain adverse inputs against Shri Naresh Goyal, chairman of the Jet Airways, and attached a gist of the inputs on him, which repeated almost all the points raised originally by Anjan Ghosh and K.P. Singh, and reproduced Ghoshs letter almost verbatim. Report, though unconfirmed, ascribes this exponential growth in the companys holding due to money transfers through hawala (illegal money transfer) channels, the note concluded.
After this indictment, Mittals note concluded: In view of this position, the ministry of civil aviation may please consider the proposal keeping all aspects in view and take an appropriate decision. He added that the order has been issued with the approval of the home secretary.
Once again, Advani did not seem to have any comments on the issue. Yet, he cannot be singled out for blame in a system where ambivalence and obfuscationnot positive articulationmark the conduct of business.
Despite the governments almost clean chit, the intelligence agencies never closed their files on Jet Airways. As of 2015, I had confirmation the case was open. The former chief of an intelligence agency said the case could never be closed. It is a test case for us, and it is a shame that, despite such overwhelming evidence, we couldnt take any action, he said one evening, as we discussed the deep roots of the underworld and criminals in Indian politics and business. He argued that the extent of Dawoods network had not yet been revealed to the public.
Over the years, intelligence agencies have been gathering significant evidence of Dawoods connections with many political leaders and businessmen from his hiding place in Pakistan. He has evolved very sophisticated ways of keeping in touch with the Indian elite and businesses. A Union minister in Dr Manmohan Singhs UPA government, which was in power between 2004 and 2014, had been exchanging notes with him through a resident of south Delhi, who was also suspected to be a bookie manipulating cricket games. According to several intercepts by RAW over the years, the bookie had been negotiating through the minister for Dawoods return to India. The don was willing to spend a few years in an Indian jail if he was allowed to return. The Karachi-based don had never felt at home in Pakistan; it was in India that he built his fortunes and followers.
In these intercepts, the south Delhi resident is heard promising Dawood and his key aides that the minister would try to get the government to offer Pakistan a deal to extradite Dawood.
Officially, India had been demanding that Pakistan return Dawood to India, but Pakistan continued to deny he was in its territory. Outlook
