Summary:
New Delhi, Jan 24 (PTI) In a major embarrassment to the CBI, a special court has acquitted businessman Harish Gupta who was accused of attempting to import an encryption system from Siemens in Germany in 1995 on the basis of forged certificate of the National Security Guard (NSG), calling it a "botched up probe".
In a series of terse remarks, the court pointed out that the matter involved "serious threat to the safety and security of the nation" which needed "deeper investigation", but it appears that the investigation officer (IO) "did not make even a shallow investigation." "It appears that IO has purposefully not made an investigation either on his own or at the behest of some higher-up and thus, the possibility cannot be ruled out that all these were done to save the skin of the real culprit or maybe of the present accused, if at all he was involved," Special Judge Harish Kumar said, acquitting Gupta from the charges of forgery.
On a warm April afternoon in 1996 when the country was in the middle of parliamentary elections, NSG Squadron Commander Vimal Satyarthi received a letter from the Belgium Embassy asking him to reissue the end user certificate for the import of encryption equipment from Siemens NV, Germany.
The equipment was only sold to law enforcement agencies of a country and Satyarthi had not issued any end user certificate for interception equipment which he was being asked to re-issue.
The letter sent alarm bells ringing in the security establishment as the Belgium Embassy communique meant that someone was attempting to import the equipment with the help of forged end user certificate, dated December 18, 1995, purportedly issued by Satyarthi.
The NSG carried out an internal enquiry following which its then Director General A K Tandon wrote to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) flagging the matter on May 9, 1996.