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	Virendra Kapoor

April 15, 2002

	Politicians rarely, if ever, go after fellow politicians. An unwritten compact binds them to protect each other whether they are in or out of power. And so it is that despite frightening noises on the cases against Captain Satish Sharma, the blue-eyed boy of the late Rajiv Gandhi and now a Congress MP from Rai Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, the Central Bureau of Investigation has all but let him be. We have hit a roadblock in our investigations due to the 'non-cooperation of the US authorities,' a CBI counsel told a Delhi magistrate while seeking to drop charges against the captain. The prosecution case was that Sharma had used relatives abroad to launder money. Accordingly, he had sent it across through the hawala route, and the money was returned through proper banking channels as 'gifts.' The CBI found that none of Sharma's relatives were in a position to give away money like that -- their tax returns proved this. Yet the sleuths now want to drop charges. The magistrate hearing the case wasn't convinced. Try harder, he told the CBI. Unbecoming conduct The Delhi police are yet to decide whether it was a case of murder or not, but K Natwar Singh, whose estranged daughter-in-law Natasha, was found dead in a New Delhi hotel a few weeks ago in suspicious circumstances has apparently been browbeating investigators. Weeks before her body was found, Natwar Singh defended his son Jagat. Responding to a news report that his son had broken a beer bottle on Natasha's boyfriend Vinay Kapur at a party in a Gurgaon hotel, the erudite Congress leader said, "The provocation was justified." Yeh Hain India! A housewife enrolled herself as a member of the Audyogic Co-operative Group Housing Society in Delhi's Jamuna Patparganj complex way back in 1984. She made all the requisite payments for a three-bedroom flat. Eight years later, she was given a two-bedroom flat. She protested. So did at least four others, who too had paid for three-bedroom flats but were offered smaller apartments. What happened, it would appear, was that some members of the managing committee had originally applied for two-bedroom flats but later changed their minds and arbitrarily upgraded themselves for the larger category. So our housewife complained to the registrar, co-operative societies, Delhi government. She also approached the courts. First the Delhi high court and later the Supreme Court endorsed her claim to a three-bedroom flat. The investigation by the registrar of co-operative societies, meanwhile, found at least six allotments illegal and ordered those cancelled. Despite this our housewife is yet to get her flat; the orders of the courts and registrar are yet to be implemented. The other four members, meanwhile, have settled for two-bedroom flats. "No use challenging the system," they advise her, "you will only break your head!" To the aide's aid Let's talk about a certain aide of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who is accused of amassing wealth much beyond his means. The aide has many protectors. So every time the case against him makes headway, senior Congress leaders, notably, Arjun Singh and Natwar Singh, undertake a mission to government leaders and senior CBI officials pleading his cause. Seems the two Singhs, like quite a few others in the Congress, derive their clout in part by keeping the aide in good humour -- for, the power equations in the main Opposition party are determined not by your proximity to Sonia but to the man who guards access to her! Illustrations: Uttam Ghosh Mail us your comments Capital Buzz
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