Aug. 12: One episode Sushma Swaraj sprang on the Congress today dates back to the Ronald Reagan era in the US.
The foreign minister said that as Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi had helped out his childhood friend Adil Shahryar, convicted in America. Adil was the son of Mohammad Yunus, a close associate of Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi.
On a state visit in June 1985, Rajiv had reportedly made a personal request to Reagan that resulted in the US President commuting Adil's sentence. He was serving a 35-year sentence for allegedly setting off a firebomb and committing fraud and other violations in Florida.
According to the India Abroad newspaper, Rajiv had denied asking for his friend's sentence be commuted but said: "We do believe that he has been wrongly imprisoned."
According to a report in The New York Times on August 15, 1985, Reagan signed the clemency papers on June 11, the day Rajiv arrived in Washington.
"Unlike other presidential papers, grants of clemency are not routinely published by the White House and made available to the press, accounting for the action's lack of notice. The Shahryar commutation was reported in the Indian press and confirmed by the White House press office, which referred a caller to the Justice Department for comment. A department spokesman, Joseph Krovisky, said he could not go beyond the text of the official clemency grant, which stated that Mr. Shahryar, then in the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, would not have been eligible for parole until 1991. He said: 'It has been made to appear that the ends of justice do not require that the said Adil Shahryar serve the aforesaid sentence in its entirety'," wrote Irvin Molotsky and Warren Weaver Jr in the Times.
Set free, Adil did not live too long. Privately, his father Yunus used to say that his son had fallen into "bad company". Adil had gone to the US for higher education when Sanjay Gandhi had left for the UK for apprenticeship with Rolls-Royce.
Adil was also a close friend of Amitabh Bachchan, his brother Ajitabh and Kabir Bedi. In her Indira - The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi, biographer Katherine Frank has claimed that Adil used to steal cars for joyrides and then abandon them in Delhi, an allegation denied by Yunus.
Yunus, born in Abbotabad, Pakistan, was inducted into the Indian Foreign Service by Nehru and he served as ambassador to Turkey, Indonesia, Iraq and Spain. Yunus retired from government service as secretary, ministry of commerce.
Sanjay had met Maneka for the first time in Adil's presence. B.D. Kapur, a retired general who was settled abroad, and his wife Kamla were friends with Yunus. They stayed at Yunus's house on holiday when their son Vinoo struck up a friendship with Sanjay and Adil. Maneka, a niece of Gen. Kapur, regularly visited the house.
Maneka's parents T.S. Anand and Amteswar were staying at Greater Kailash in New Delhi then. At the time of the Sanjay-Maneka wedding in September 1974, the Kapurs suggested to Yunus to have the wedding at 12 Willingdon Crescent, the official residence of Yunus.
The host faced a peculiar problem as the government had stopped whitewashing official homes as part of an austerity drive. Adil took the initiative to get the exterior whitewashed at his expense, got some floodlights and arranged floral decorations.
The Anands were firmly told not to pay for anything. Maneka remained extremely fond of "Yunus Chacha" even when she had fallen out with Indira.
When Indira was homeless after the 1977 electoral debacle, Yunus loaned to the Nehru-Gandhis his house which accommodated five adults, two children, five dogs, dozens of boxes of books and papers.
Yunus's end came in 2001. He was snubbed by Sonia in the mid-1990s when he issued a statement saying "Rajiv's widow would much rather beg on streets of Delhi than join politics". Sonia had asked her close aide, V. George, to issue a clarification that Yunus did not represent her.
When Yunus came to know about it, he was devastated and said in bitterness: " Naukar naukar hee rahta hai (Once a servant, always a servant)."
