CBI dredges up scams from sunken ship

In one of the worst maritime disasters off the city’s coast, the M V Arcadia Pride went down on June 19, 1997, taking 20 crew members and their families with it. The CBI, which was asked to investigate the circumstances surrounding the disaster by the vessel’s current owners, came up with some startling revelations. Built as the M V Vishwa Madhuri by Hindustan Shipyard Limited, Vishakhapatnam in, 1974 for the SCI, the cargo vessel was ravaged in a fire off the Madras harbour on March 27, 1992. The SCI, which owned the ship then, sought quotations for its repairs.

Of the three bidders, including some government-owned shipyards, the contract was finally awarded to the Chennai-based M/s Chokani Shipyard. Though it quoted Rs 4.5 crore, the shipyard finally billed the SCI for a whopping Rs 8.2 crore. The amount, credited to M/s Chokani Shipyard on August 20, 1993, was almost twice the original quotation. But no questions were asked and the kickbacks were allegedly pocketed by senior SCI officials in collusion with the former Union minister. The matter went unnoticed. The work included refurbishing the captain’s cabin, the bridge and some other quarters on the upper deck of the vessel, CBI sources revealed.

A year and a half later, the SCI sailed into another scandal, this time while striking a deal for sale of the ship. One April 8, 1995, the SCI sold the vessel to a Mumbai-based company M/s Arcadia Shipping Limited, for a pittance – it accepted Rs 3.4 crore in return for the ship, less than half the amount it had lavished on repairs alone. Subsequently, the ship was rechristened the M V Arcadia Pride. The ship’s surveyors, `Bureau Veritas’, later certified the vessel as seaworthy in August 1995 and registered it as a deep sea cargo vessel. Yet the carrier, with a cargo of 12,700 tonnes of powdered sulphur, mysteriously sank with almost its entire crew. A senior SCI official, requesting anonymity, told Express Newsline that it was indeed true that an obscene amount was spent on the M V Vishwa Madhuri’s repairs and that the ship was later sold cheap. He also confirmed that the CBI is probing the deal. A barrage of complaints concerning irregularities within the SCI threw a twist into the CBIinvestigations. However, the Delhi-based Inspector General of Police, CBI operations, Salim Ali, was not available for comment.

Following last year’s tragedy, the Mercantile Marine Department (MMD) commissioned its own investigation into the incident which revealed that the sulphur was unevenly loaded and, moreover, unsuitable to be carried by the general cargo vessel. MMD Principal Officer Sanjay Chackroborty said, “A First Information Report (FIR) against the directors of Arcadia Shipping Limited was lodged at the Yellow Gate Police station in January this year”.

The CBI team investigating the ship’s scam-ridden history, will submit its report to its director in two months.