The Hindu : HDW submarine deal case: CBI asked to file closure report

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jan 15, 2003

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HDW submarine deal case: CBI asked to file closure report

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI JAN. 14. The Delhi High Court today allowed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to file a closure report in the 15-year-old HDW submarine deal case after the investigating agency submitted that the probe could not be continued further as the Swiss and German authorities had expressed their inability to provide any help in the probe.

A Division Bench, comprising Justice Usha Mehra and Justice Pradeep Nandrajog, asked the CBI to file the closure report in the trial court before March 24.

The High Court was seized of the matter for the past six months. The matter had reached there after B.L. Wadhera, a Delhi High Court lawyer, filed a public interest litigation seeking expeditious investigation into the case.

Later, the Janata Party president, Subramanian Swamy, also intervened in the matter when he in a petition filed in the High Court alleged that another German company, AEG, had paid bribes to the New Government Electrical Factory (NGEF) of the Karnataka Government in the supply of torpedoes for the two Advance Class submarines supplied by HDW of Germany for the Indian Navy.

When Mr. Wadhera opposed the court's permission to the CBI to file a closure report in the case, the Bench said he could do so before the trial court which was empowered to close the case after hearing the petitioner and the Government.

The CBI's FIR in the matter had the names of several Defence officials and private companies as accused.

The investigating agency had alleged that about seven per cent of the Rs. 420 crores deal was paid as commission by the supplier company to get the supply order.

The matter had come to public notice when the then Indian Ambassador in Germany had written to the then Defence Minister in the Rajiv Gandhi Cabinet, V.P. Singh, that there was an accusation that the supplier company had paid seven per cent as commission to middlemen to strike the deal.

Mr. Singh had immediately ordered an inquiry into the deal that created a rift between him and Rajiv Gandhi leading to the exit of the Defence Minister from the Cabinet.

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