Congress cries complicity; BJP hits back
NEW DELHI: A lookout notice against Vijay Mallya, calling for his detention on sight at airports, was diluted months before he left India for the UK in the middle of loan fraud investigations against him. After the fugitive businessman’s sensational claim about meeting Finance Minister Arun Jaitley before going, questions have been raised about the notice and why he was allowed to leave.
The CBI says the notice, put out on October 16, 2015, was converted weeks later on November 24 into a notice for “report on arrival” because it didn’t believe Mallya was a flight risk. The liquor tycoon had, at the time, frequently travelled between India and the UK.
The first notice, the investigation agency said, was a “mistake” - the Mumbai immigration branch checked out the detention column while filling a form.
The notice was issued after the CBI registered its first case against Mallya on July 29, 2015, based on information from sources - no bank had formally complained, the agency says. When the lookout notice was issued in October, Mallya was in London.
He returned the day the notice was downgraded and left again on December 1.
The CBI says it received a call from immigration the day before his arrival, on November 23, asking whether Mallya should be detained. That’s when a corrected lookout circular was put out.
Mallya travelled back and forth between London after that and left on March 2, 2016. This time, he never returned.
The CBI says Mallya was questioned on December 9, 10 and 11. There was no reason to believe he could escape, said officials, defending the diluted notice.
The Congress and the BJP on Thursday were locked in a fierce war of words over the Vijay Mallya case with Rahul Gandhi openly accusing the finance minister of lying and allowing the billionaire tycoon to flee the country. The BJP threw a counter punch, claiming that the Gandhi family tried to help resurrect Mallya’s floundering Kingfisher Airlines in 2011-12.
Seeking to back his accusation, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said party MP P L Punia saw Jaitley sitting with Mallya in Parliament’s Central Hall on March 1, 2016, and held an elaborate 15-20 minute meeting with him. Punia added that he had seen Jaitley and Mallya talking discreetly when he was in the Central Hall of Parliament.
Stepping up his attack, Gandhi asked Jaitley to resign and challenged Jaitley to get CCTV footage of the day.
Describing it as an “open and shut case of collusion”, Rahul alleged there was some deal between Jaitley and Mallya. “The finance minister has accepted publicly that a criminal has told him that he is going to run away and has not done anything, has not informed the CBI, and has not informed the ED,” Gandhi said.
The BJP hit back with equal ferocity, blaming the UPA government for giving a “sweet deal” to Kingfisher Airlines to keep it afloat and suggesting the Gandhi family perhaps owned the airlines.
“There is a series of letters between the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) and the SBI (State Bank of India). These letters show us how the previous dispensation under Sonia Gandhi was biased, partial and kept all norms and regulations at bay to give a sweet deal to Kingfisher Airlines,” party spokesperson Sambit Patra said.
Union minister Piyush Goyal joined the chorus of protest from the ruling party and said Rahul Gandhi should come clean on the relations between his family and Mallya.
The now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines was given loans bypassing all norms, laws and regulations, Goyal said.
Mallya, he asserted, had no credibility as he was under the “glare of
law” and was a criminal. He could not be taken seriously, Goyal added.
His party colleague Subramanian Swamy also tweeted:
“We have now two undeniable facts on the Mallya escape issue:
1. Look Out Notice was diluted on Oct 24, 2015, from ‘Block’ to ‘Report’ departure enabling Mallya to depart with 54 checked luggage items. 2. Mallya told FM in Central Hall of Parliament that he was leaving for London.”