The timing: when ink barely dry on CBI’s ‘chargesheet’ in her Rs 20-crore assets case

Mayawati told the Supreme Court last month that the CBI probe was merely vendetta adding to the “worry, anxiety, expense and disturbance in her political life.” And that it was “illegal” because an investigation into her assets was beyond the purview of the original Rs 175-crore Taj Corridor case.

That case was registered way back in October 2003 and CBI officials have told The Sunday Express that in the last two years that they have spent “re-investigating” the case, they have given Mayawati “marginal” relief in calculating her DA liability which currently stands at Rs 20 crore.

Along with Mayawati, several members of her immediate family and accountants are likely to figure in the CBI’s chargesheet, which is said to have been cleared by CBI Director Vijay Shankar.

As first reported by The Indian Express, the agency had pegged her DA liability in 2004 at Rs 28 crore, following which she claimed that she had been made the target of political vendetta.

Mayawati’s latest move against the probe is a petition filed in the Supreme Court last month, demanding quashing of proceedings.

Mayawati’s DA case has witnessed many twists and turns, but according to top agency sources, a thorough re-examination of evidence has only made it a watertight DA case, considered one of the agency’s biggest. Also, Mayawati was given the “opportunity” to explain her assets in 2005 following which her lawyers sent several sets of explanatory documents to the CBI, the last in December 2007.

Thus, while the DA case may not have become larger in terms of value of disproportionate assets since 2004 (when the first round of investigations by a different team) were completed, the evidence is more clinching.

For instance, CBI officials claim the Rs 7.36 crore lying in 54 bank accounts frozen by the CBI in 2003 is money “laundered” by her. The modus operandi: deposit huge amounts of undeclared cash with “book-keepers” and then deposit cheques into numerous bank accounts.

Soon after registering its FIR in 2003, the CBI listed 72 immovable properties owned by Mayawati and members of her family valued at Rs 7 crore which the agency says was purchased with resources beyond their sources of income. It also listed 307 “dubious” donations of small denominations which were deposited into these bank accounts, and even traced and questioned 50 of the “donors” who turned out to be hawkers and rickshaw-pullers.

Mayawati took the plea that several of these properties had been purchased by members of her family without her knowledge and that, in any case, she was now estranged with most of her family. As far as the deposits into her bank accounts are concerned, she described them as “generous gifts” from her supporters.

Significantly, even as they wrapped up the case, CBI officials said that the other twin actions taken by Mayawati — of filing an appeal before the Income Tax Tribunal and her relatives making a declaration of their assets before the Settlement Commission were “irrelevant” to the DA case.

Said a senior official, “The Income Tax case pertains to only two properties and a part of her income and does not affect our case of her pre-2003 assets. In any case, the Centre has filed appeals against the relief given by the IT Tribunal. As far as the Settlement Commission is concerned, though the Mayawati case has not abated and will be heard by the Settlement Commission, there is no order by them as of now.”

The timing of the CBI’s action is significant. For one, investigations in the case have been wrapped up barely a month before Vijay Shankar demits office ( he ‘inherited” the Mayawati case when he took charge) and two, it comes at a time when the political equation between the UPA Government and the Chief Minister have, once again, hit an all-time low.

72 properties, 54 accounts under the scanner

• 72: total number of immovable assets

• Value of assets: Rs 7 crore

• 54 bank accounts frozen

• Money frozen in accounts: Rs 7.36 crore

• 307 donations

• Value of donations: Rs 13.18 crore