Antigua is where
paradise starts.
Not my line. That is
the official line of the Government of Antigua. It is also Mehul Choksi’s
belief.
Antigua is a small
island forming part of the Leeward Islands, which themselves are part of the
West Indies. Antigua, if their website is to be believed, is stunning. A sylvan
paradise. In case you did not know, Sir Vivian Richards is from Antigua as are
Curtly Ambrose, Andy Roberts and Richie Richardson. It is not just cricketeers
who come from Antigua. Antigua’s beauty has been so alluring that Eric Clapton,
Richard Branson, Silvio Berlusconi, Giorgio Armani, Timothy Dalton and Oprah
Winfrey have homes there.
Mehul was always a
person with an eye on the finer things in life. Mehul too has a home in
Antigua.
Antigua wants money and
investment. So, like many countries – including the USA and the UK – it has schemes
whereby, based on how much you spend, you get a selection of rights. It is like
a menu card. The right to get residency, permanent residency and citizenship
all come at a price. You choose according to your hunger and your budget and
get what you need. Of course, I am simplifying and generalizing, but, that is
basically the concept in a nutshell. Needless to say, you do need to be clean
and free of serious criminal offences to get these rights.
The moment Mehul’s Antiguan
nationality was discovered a few days ago, our “middia” was electrified and went into its usual overdrive. Our
politicians had something else to exaggerate and the talking heads on TV
frothed.
As is the case, after the hysteria was over,
Antigua responded. Antigua said that Mehul had applied for a passport way back
in March 2017. Mehul had submitted all the documentation to prove that he was a
pure as driven snow, and, true to his Palanpuri Jain beliefs, he had not
committed any crime. As I have written in the preceding paragraphs, Antigua
does not want criminals, so as part of its citizenship program, the applicant
has to provide information that he is in fact, clean.
This is where the fun starts.
In 2015 when applying for an Indian Passport,
Mehul had used the “Tatkal” system, by
which, on payment of a higher fee and some additional paperwork, your Passport
is issued very quickly. When the Passport was issued, a remark was made in his
file that, in future, “no police verification” would be required. This, I
believe, was absolutely normal standard operating procedure. I doubt there was
any ‘hera pheri’.
Fast forward to March 2017 when Mehul decided
to become an Antiguan. He is required to provide a certificate from the Indian
Passport authorities that he is clean. So, on an application made by Mehul to
the Passport Office for a Police Clearance Certificate, the Passport office
asked the police station at the Tony [I just had to use that word] Malabar Hill
in whose jurisdiction Mehul resides, for information. After looking thru the
data on the Criminal Antecedents and Information System (CAIS) the Malabar Hill
Police Station certified that Mehul indeed was clean, he had no criminal record
or history. Based on this proverbial clean chit, our Passport office issued a
Police Clearance Certificate to the Antiguan authorities and Mehul got his
Antiguan citizenship.
The rest, as they say, is history. Of course, in
March 2017 when Mehul did apply for a Police Clearance Certificate, he was
innocent [actually he still is] and the PNB Scam was months away in the future.
I guess that you must be in the know of almost
all I have written. I shall come to my point shortly.
There is a phrase, there are many ways to skin
a cat. There is also a phrase, about peeling the layers of an onion. What
surprises me is how this has unraveled, how the onion has been peeled. Let me
explain.
Sometime in February 2018 the Nirav Modi – PNB Scam
broke. It was apparent almost immediately, that both Nirav and his uncle Mehul
had left the country. We did have the “middia”,
politicians and talking heads breathing fire and brimstone. Frankly, the size
of the scam, the audacity and personalities of the characters involved, had us
all fairly shocked. Everybody and his brother wanted to know where Mehul could
be. No one had an answer, no one had a clue. It was as if Mehul had simply,
magically vanished.
It is only a few days ago, nearly 6 months into
the scam that we know that Mehul had an Antiguan Passport. If one believes the
narrative that is doing the rounds, no one in India knew of Mehul’s Antiguan Passport
or his whereabouts or even what he was doing.
Bullshit, or to use a cruder word, GHANTA!
Has the entire staff working at the Malabar
Hill Police station in March 2017 when they pored over the Criminal Antecedents
and Information System (CAIS) and issued their clearance been affected by
collective amnesia? Why did, or why does no one remember that they issued a Police
verification? No one?
Fine, the Malabar Hill Police Station is
useless, suffers from a collective memory loss and is staffed with pigeons. How
do you explain the silence of our Passport Office that issued the PCC? Surely
the man who signed it would remember, unless of course, he has been killed in an
Eastern Express crash, or a Mumbai Pune Expressway crash, or run over by a
train or felled by a tree or drowned in a pothole, all of which happen with
alarming regularity in Mumbai. Have all of the gents who dealt with that
request stopped eating “Badaam” which
affected their memory?
Why is there such a deafening silence from both
these departments? When the whole country was agog with the PNB Scam, no one remembered,
no one said yes, we had issued a PCC or yes we did certify that there were no
records on the Criminal Antecedents and Information System (CAIS).
The answer is obvious. With the cruel
vindictiveness, the victimization and blood lust that we Indians have, these
officers would have been jailed, their careers in shambles and families ruined
if they ever admitted that, yes, we had issued the PCC. Alas, the layers of the
onion have been peeled, albeit in a very different way. I have no doubt in my
mind that in March 2017 when the PCC was issued, there was probably nothing
against Mehul, so the officers were well within their rights issuing the PCC. But
our behavior has ensured their silence.
You know what is much more dangerous? It has
been 6 months since the scam broke. These officers both in the Passport Office
and Malabar Hill Police Station, in the last 6 months, would have destroyed all
evidence that would show how and why they issued the PCC. That is going to be
very damaging in the long run. How it will play out, I am unsure, but damaging
it is going to be.
I guess that we can draw comfort, if at all it
could be comfort, that those gents who have kept mum about their action in
March 2017, have not slept a wink since the scam broke.