Jaswant Singh

Jaipur, Nov. 5: A Jodhpur court today ordered a probe into allegations that Jaswant Singh served his guests opium last week as the bitter aftertaste of the family feast lingered for the embattled BJP veteran.

Judge Shankar Kumar Kumawat asked police to file a first information report against the former Union minister and nine other party leaders said to have taken the drug willingly at the October 31 lunch in Jasol, Jaswant’s native village in Barmer district.

Serving and taking opium is illegal under the Narcotic Drug and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985, and the 69-year-old leader and the others face 10 years in prison if found guilty.

Jaswant’s son Manvendra Singh said it seemed an “unnecessary controversy”.

“There is nothing to react on the issue,” the Barmer MP said. “Enough has already been said.”

Manvendra, however, said he was not present at the feast and would not be able to comment on whether opium was served or not.

The event, reported as a conclave of BJP dissidents in Rajasthan, was to celebrate Jaswant’s successful tour of several villages in the district and a birth in the family.

“I believe the particular allegation has no truth,” party spokesperson Rajiv Pratap Rudy said in Delhi. “However, an investigation has been ordered and truth will prevail.”

MP Raghuveer Singh Kaushal, one of the leaders named in the complaint, denied that opium was served.

“It was just kesar (saffron) and not opium at the feast. Although the ritual of having opium is still followed in western parts of the state, it has long been replaced by kesar,” he said.

“I took a plane to Delhi after the ceremony. Tell me, for those of us who have never had opium, would I have been able to travel without any hiccups even if I had a whiff of the drug?”

Jaswant, who had earlier denied reports that he had followed the Marwar tradition of serving guests opium, was not available for comment today.

The complainant, Om Prakash Bishnoi, a Jodhpur resident, had said Jaswant brought the opium and served the drug to nine others publicly. So action should be taken against him under the narcotics act.

Bishnoi’s counsel Mallam Singh Choudhary contended that since most of those who took the drug were lawmakers, their conduct was more glaring.

The others named in the complaint are MP Kailash Meghwal, cabinet ministers Narpat Singh Razvi, Ghanshyam Tiwari and Madan Dilawar, BJP chief whip Mahavir Prasad Jain, MLAs Jogeshwar Garg and Shankar Singh Rajpurohit and former state BJP chief L.K. Chaturvedi.

Police sources were, however, sceptical of the probe leading anywhere as traces of the opium allegedly served have by now disappeared and the medical examination of those said to have taken the drug was unlikely to reveal anything.

But with Jaswant cornered, the feast may have given his adversary, chief minister Vasundhara Raje, much-needed time to reinforce her dwindling authority in the state BJP.