Telgi, Pawar: Clearing the air?

Mumbai/Bangalore, Sept. 10: Stamp-paper scam kingpin Abdul Karim Telgi today denied naming Union minister Sharad Pawar as a patron and said the TV footage that showed him doing so during a truth serum test was “fabricated and doctored”.

In a signed, two-page statement handed over to his lawyer in Pune, Telgi said he would soon make a fresh confession naming his real political and police patrons.

Telgi said the tape aired by a news channel on Wednesday wasn’t from the original video CD of his narco-analysis.

“He denies ever naming Sharad Pawar and Chhagan Bhujbal. He also denies ever personally meeting Pawar or paying money to Bhujbal for favours in the stamps business,” his lawyer Harshad Nimbalkar told The Telegraph over phone from Pune.

“He did not say when he would make the confession (naming the actual patrons) but said he would reveal the information before the court.”

The narco-analysis was conducted on December 22, 2003, at Bangalore’s Victoria Hospital. It showed a semi-conscious Telgi blurting out the names of Nationalist Congress Party leader Pawar and his associate Bhujbal in answer to questions put by doctors.

The footage also showed Telgi naming Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, former Telugu Desam MLA Krishna Yadav, former Karnataka minister Roshan Baig and former Mumbai police commissioner Ranjit Sharma.

Telgi’s statement asked why the footage, if genuine as claimed, was “withheld” for three years and not produced before the special court trying him. “He says the video CD of his narco-analysis was shown to him by Karnataka special task force officials when he was in a Bangalore jail. It was 35 minutes long and did not show him naming Pawar or Bhujbal,” Nimbalkar said.

But some BJP sources in Karnataka claimed that the timing of the “CD leak” was rooted in politics. The prime target was not Pawar but the Karnataka Congress. The footage, they said, was meant to deflect attention from recent allegations that chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy had taken a Rs 150-crore bribe from the mining lobby and that former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda’s family was amassing land in Karnataka.

The sources said the “selected leaks” were also a way of getting back at the state Congress that has been gunning for Kumaraswamy ever since he walked out of the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition and teamed up with the BJP in January.

With the TV footage showing Telgi naming mainly leaders of the Congress and its ally NCP, the Dal (S) and the BJP have demanded a fresh probe into the stamp-paper scandal.

The sources said “more missiles could now be fired at the Congress” and old corruption and land-grab cases reopened against the party.

Pawar, who had on Wednesday dismissed Telgi’s purported claim as “frivolous”, refused to comment on the denial.