Don't Tell the Governor

by Ravi Subramanian

  ‘I will be addressing the nation today at eight p.m. Till that happens, you are all forbidden from speaking to anyone outside this room. No phone calls, no leaks, no press briefings. Everything will happen once the public announcement is done on television. After I address the nation, the FM, the RBI governor and I will address a press conference to give out the minute details of the programme. All of you can go home post that. Till then, make yourself comfortable. We still have an hour for the address to begin.’

  Aditya felt red-hot rage surge through his body. His high-flying plans had been laid low by this announcement by the PM. He had been made to look like a fool. The PM had lied about his involvement to a roomful of people.

  He had known nothing about whatever the PM spoke of. The reintroduction of Le Da Spire? A new two-thousand-rupee note? His signature on that note? Despite the fact that all this was within his remit, he had had no clue. He had been kept entirely in the dark. How could they even do such a thing? He wasn’t just furious, he was also hurt. He wanted to confront them then and there, but taking on the PM in front of the entire Cabinet was impossible. So he waited till the PM had finished his speech and then walked up to Siddharth Pande.

  ‘What is all this, sir? You are introducing a new curency note and abolishing an exisiting one without the involvement of the RBI? My signature’s on a note that I am seeing for the first time? This is forgery, sir. And what is this about Le Da Spire? How could an order be placed with Le Da Spire, especially when we have three currency presses in our country that have idle capacity? Under whose instruction was this carried out?’ he whispered angrily into the FM’s ears.

  ‘Under whose instructions? What is wrong with you, Aditya?’ the Finance Minister said calmly. ‘Under your instructions, of course!’

  ‘Oh, come on!’ Aditya exclaimed and threw his hands in the air, exhasperated at the farce playing out in front of him. A few of those present in the room turned and looked at him, forcing him to lower his voice and speak calmly. ‘Mine?’ he said in a furious whisper. ‘You know very well that I never gave any such order.’

  The Finance Minister didn’t say anything to Aditya, but turned and called out, ‘Ranjeet, can I have the file please?’

  The Finance Secretary walked up to Pande and passed him the file he was holding, a mocking smile on his face. Siddharth Pande opened it, flipped through a few pages and handed it over to Aditya. ‘There you go. See for yourself.’

  Aditya took the file from the FM and stared at it. The invoices, circulars, quotations with endorsements, the final approval on the design and the order for printing given to Le Da Spire, all of them were in the file. But none of them carried his signatures. He looked up. The FM was smiling.

  ‘You can sign them now,’ the FM said. He reached out into the top pocket of his jacket and pulled out a pen. ‘Here you go,’ he said as he handed over the pen to Aditya.

  Aditya was furious. ‘No! I won’t be doing any such thing,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘Okay,’ the FM said as he calmly placed the pen back in his pocket. ‘Then could you could step aside for a moment with me, into this room?’ He pointed to the room that was annexed to the main hall.

  As Aditya entered the room, he was surprised to see two other people standing there.

  ‘Hi Aditya,’ Khosla beamed at him and came forward to shake his hand. He turned towards the second gentleman in the room and introduced him.

  ‘Meet Kabir Khan,’ Additional Director, CBI.’

  75

  8 November 2016

  DELHI

  Aditya Kesavan had been angry after the PM’s address. Now, he was confused. What was Khosla doing here? He should have had no role to play in the Prime Minister’s office that day. Yet he was there. And what was the CBI there for? Wasn’t this Kabir Khan the man who had called Rajdeep Sarkar?

  ‘So, Mr Kesavan,’ the FM spoke to him once he’d pulled the door shut behind him. ‘Do I take it that you are refusing to sign these papers authorizing this revolutionary step, a decision that will do a world of good to the community at large? You will not endorse something which will be a giant leap towards a terror-free, corruption-free, black-money-free environment?’

  ‘This has never been discussed with the RBI. You just cannot bulldoze the RBI into submission. Even if you do not think highly of the individual at the helm, the institution has to be respected. I am happy to sit down and discuss this with you; debate this decision objectively, on its merits, and then take a call. Not like this. This is not acceptable, sir.’ Aditya took a deep breath. ‘The RBI will not lend itself to being manipulated by the ministry. We are not puppets in the hands of the government. We will not rubber stamp your decisions,’ he finished. While he was upset at being sidestepped, he was worried about something else. The Prime Minister’s announcement had caused him extreme duress. He was stuck in a situation he didn’t have a solution for.

  ‘But does it count for nothing that the decision has been taken by the PM? That the new notes are already in? The currency consignment is at the airports, waiting for the RBI’s instruction for despatch. What do you want us to do with that?’

  Aditya shrugged his shoulders. He was getting into an irrational frame of mind. ‘That is for you to decide, sir.’

  ‘So you will not endorse it?’

  ‘As I said, I’m happy to debate this thoroughly. But I’m not willing to endorse anything before everything has been evaluated in detail.’ Aditya was firm. He wanted to scuttle the step that the PM wanted to take. If he didn’t do that he would be in serious trouble. Pallavi would be in serious trouble.

  The FM shut the file containing the papers. ‘Okay, if that’s what you want. It is your call, Mr Kesavan. You have left me with no choice.’ He smiled. ‘We will do as you say. Thoroughly debate the issue. But you see, there is only one problem,’ the FM continued.

  Aditya waited, confused by the man’s pleased tone.

  The FM’s smile grew wider, sensing Aditya’s uncertainty. ‘The only problem, Mr Governor, is that a jail is not the best place for a thorough debate. Or is it?’ he asked, raising his left eyebrow.

  ‘What?’ Suddenly, Aditya felt his throat dry up, and his anger dissipate into nervousness. ‘Jail?’ he repeated.

  ‘Yes. Isn’t that where you’re headed to after this?’

  Aditya looked at the FM and then at Khosla and Khan. All the men had smiles plastered to their faces, and he suddenly realized that something was very, very wrong.

  ‘Mr Khan?’ the Finance Minister looked at Kabir. ‘Why don’t you take this forward? Mr Kesavan seems to be quite lost.’

  ‘Well, Mr Kesavan. I am only a small government servant who investigates cases of national interest. But let’s see if I can clear your confusion. You see, a few years back I investigated a case involving robbery of crude oil from a large onshore oil field in Rajasthan – a place called Barmer. A father-son duo siphoned off fifteen to twenty thousand litres of crude oil every day from the field, for a period of two years. And how did they do it?’ He looked at Aditya, who stayed silent. ‘The modus operandi was very simple. The crude oil was transferred from government-owned oil fields to the refinery – a distance of thirty-five kilometres – by tankers. The tankers were tracked by a small GPS device. The duo realized that the GPS device was screwed on to the dashboard of the truck and worked when connected to a twelve-volt battery. The fact that it was connected to the dashboard made it easy to fix and remove. It served the purpose too, because the same device could be used in multiple trucks at different points in time.

  ‘Smart and motivated, the father and son duo paid the truck drivers to stop at their warehouse, which was on the route the trucks would normally follow. At the warehouse, they would switch the GPS tracking device from the truck to a Maruti Swift car, and the Maruti Swift would proceed slowly on the path the tanker was supposed to travel on. So no one in the centralized GPS tracking unit would notice anything amiss with the tankers. As far as they were concerne
d, the GPS device was on the right path. Little did they know that it was on the wrong vehicle.’ He took a deep breath, picked up a glass from the table, gulped down some water and continued. ‘The tankers would remain at the warehouse where the father and son would remove a significant quantity of oil. After downloading a fair bit of oil from the tankers into storage containers, the tanker would hurry and catch up with the Maruti Swift. At which point the GPS device would be disconnected from the car and fitted back on the tanker. The oil tanker would then proceed on its normal pre-decided path and reach its destination. The switching time for the GPS was so short, less than a minute, that the blip would not even be noticed by anyone tracking the vehicles, centrally.’ He paused and stared at Aditya, his eyes flashing. ‘Sounds familiar?’ he asked. When Aditya didn’t respond, he added, ‘The tankers were owned by one Narendra Travels. The robbery was exposed by yours truly.’ He bowed.

  When Aditya still didn’t speak, Kabir Khan went on. ‘After the robbery was exposed by yours truly, Narendra Travels closed down. Do you know who bought their trucks and tankers?’ Again he waited for a response. Again, he only got silence from Aditya. ‘Well, it was Deekay Transports.’

  Aditya was startled, and Kabir looked pleased at the effect he was having. He folded his arms against his chest and said, ‘I am not sure if the Great Oil Robbery of Barmer was an inspiration for you, but your plan, I can tell you, was almost perfect.’

  Aditya looked at Khosla. The latter seemed completely unperturbed. The FM was standing in a corner, listening to all this with a grin on his face. Aditya felt like reality was slipping from his grasp. What had life come to?

  ‘So whose idea was it to use Deekay Cash and Logistics Management’s armoured vans to transport the cash from RBI currency vaults to Palam Airport? I’m quite sure it was yours, Mr Kesavan. Am I right?’

  Aditya didn’t respond.

  Khan didn’t seem to care. He continued, ‘When we figured out that large amounts of cash had been moved on 23 October from the RBI vaults, something which even Rajdeep Sarkar confirmed while on vacation, we checked the law enforcement controlled CCTVs outside the RBI. We noticed a stream of armoured vans heading out of the vaults in groups of five vans. You might recollect that under the Nigahen project, whole of Delhi is covered by lakhs of CCTV cameras. Of these, the ones under the Delhi police are monitored at the NCR Police Control Centre. We went there in search of the feed. And it was not too difficult to track the cash vans – all belonging to Deekay Cash and Logistics. We tracked the vans till they entered the airport gates. After which we lost them. Airport officials are finicky with their tapes, you see.

  ‘We didn’t notice anything amiss in the first few groups of cash vans. But something was definitely off in the last group that left the vaults. This was a group of seven armoured vans which travelled in a line, one behind the other. The moment they left the vault, a Skoda started following them. The Skoda, we figured when we rechecked the earlier feeds, was parked on the road all the while, but when the last lot exited the vaults, it seamlessly slid alongside the last van. The route from the RBI vaults to the Palam Airport passes through heavy traffic areas, including the road in front of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. At the AIIMS traffic signal, which is slightly crowded, we noticed some interesting activity. The last van slowed down, allowing the Skoda to glide into position between the sixth and the seventh van, thereby isolating the last one. Once the signal was cleared for these vans to pass, the car didn’t move, thereby creating a gap between the last two vans. It was the sixth van, a large gap, the Skoda and then the seventh van. One would have expected the last van to eventually move and catch up with the first six. But when we continued watching what the CCTV camera had captured, we saw something very interesting. Another Deekay Logistics van drew up parallel to the seventh van. Someone dashed out of that new van and ran towards the driver of the seventh van. We initially thought that he was going to the Skoda to check why it had stopped in the middle of the road, but instead the person ran past the Skoda and went to the driver’s side of the seventh van. In no time the driver of the seventh van got down and ran towards the new cash van. Basically, the two drivers exchanged their positions. When we looked closely, we were surprised to see that the driver of the original seventh van was carrying something when he ran out of the vehicle. It didn’t take us much time to figure out that he was carrying the GPS tracker from the van with the cash to the van which had appeared at the traffic signal.

  ‘And then something even stranger happened. The new van followed the other six vans and proceeded towards the airport. The seventh van, the one that contained the cash, turned left and headed towards Green Park. The only difference was that it was now being driven by a driver who was not the same as the one who had left the RBI vault.

  ‘Images from outside the airport showed that all the seven vans reached the airport. The number plate on the van that took the seventh van’s place was the same as the earlier one. So no one detected the fact that it was a different van. Same driver, same registration number, same GPS tracker, identical, except for the cash.

  ‘Meanwhile, the original van which had all the cash followed the Skoda towards a vacant plot in Green Park, half a mile from the signal. We have CCTV footage from Delhi roads to establish this.

  ‘The vehicles that had gone to the airport presumably offloaded cash and returned to the RBI. Back at the RBI, the drivers reported, signed off, took their vehicles and left. Eveything would have been fine, except that the driver of the seventh truck returned to the Green Park plot. He was seen loitering around the plot late at night.’

  Aditya started sweating. ‘Why are you telling me this? What does any of this have to do with the move to demonetize thousand rupee notes or the decision to introduce two-thousand-rupee notes without RBI sanction?’

  Completely ignoring the RBI Governor’s question, Kabir Khan walked around the room. ‘Any guesses who the plot belonged to?’ he asked. And without waiting for anyone to answer, he placed his hands on the person standing next to him. ‘Doesn’t it belong to you, Mr Khosla?’

  Aditya froze.

  ‘That night, seventeen trucks left the RBI chest with ₹5,000 crore in cash – three hundred crore in each truck, in thousand-rupee notes. You, along with Danish Khosla, swung a three-hundred-crore heist, Mr Kesavan – a truckful of banknotes. Quite audacious. A three hundred crore heist. One of the biggest in the history of India, and definitely the first one carried out by the RBI Governor.’ Kabir applauded. ‘This would have gone undetected because everyone would have assumed that the entire money had been paid to the Hizbul Mujahideen. No one would have noticed the difference between the five thousand crores sent from the RBI vaults and the four thousand seven hundred crores received in Kandahar. That too because in Delhi, at the airport, just before the flight took off, you certified the amount being sent and in Kandahar, the terrorists wouldn’t have had time to count the cash. Your punt was spot on. The only mistake you guys made was that you paid off the cash van driver using currency that you had stolen. The guy met with an accident and the money trail led us to you.’

  Aditya was sweating. Every bit of what Kabir Khan had said was true. They had not counted on the money trail leading back to them. But it had. He was going down, but he didn’t want to go down without a fight. ‘Is it so easy to steal from the RBI, Mr Khan?’ he asked sarcastically.

  ‘No, but this was not a normal cash transfer. In the case of a normal cash transfer, the recipient knows the amount coming his way and hence takes stock and reports any gaps. So no one can steal money and get away with it. In this case, the recipient, Hizbul Mujahideen, would have been least bothered to count the cash,’ Kabir said.

  The Finance Minister looked at Aditya. ‘And under normal circumstances, Mr Aditya Kesavan, I would have requested Mr Khan to take you in custody.’ A shocked Aditya looked at the FM and then at Danish Khosla. Even at that time the question in his mind was, why not Khosla? He was the one who
had executed the entire heist. As if reading his mind, the FM said, ‘Mr Khosla has turned approver. Hence, he might be granted immunity or a lesser sentence by the CBI court.’

  ‘How can you be so sure that it was me and not him?’ Even as he spoke, Aditya knew that this was a juvenile and desparate question to ask, and only confirmed his involvement in the heist.

  ‘Well, if five thousand crores didn’t reach the airport, how did you confirm that the money being sent to the terrorists was ₹5,000 crore? That in itself makes you complicit, Mr Kesavan. That apart, we also have recordings of your conversations with Mr Khosla that prove the same.’

  Aditya looked up as if someone had shaken him out of slumber. He remembered Khosla mentioning to him when he had met him in the Nasik hotel gym that his phone was not tapped. How did they then know about his and Khosla’s conversation? That’s when it struck him. A memory of something Khosla had said a long time back came back to Aditya. ‘You seriously think it was her phone that was tapped?’ Khosla had asked him, referring to Pallavi’s phone. Now he realized that Pallavi had never been under surveillance. It was he all along.

  ‘I don’t think I need to tell you that you have a way out,’ the FM spoke again. ‘Sign off on all these papers. Accompany us to the press briefing, endorse everything that the PM says. And you walk free. By signing off on this, you invalidate the money that we paid the terrorists, and the money that you stole. The call is yours, Mr Kesavan.’

  Aditya could feel the world collapsing around him. He thought of his parents. What would his mother think of him now? For once he was happy that she had dementia. She wouldn’t remember anything about her son. But what would his father say? What would the world say? An RBI Governor who stole from the Central Bank. Is that how he wanted the world to remember him? And what about Pallavi? What would she do if the money did not come her way? She had already tried to commit suicide once. Someone had to take care of her.