Coffingate gets formal burial; SC throws out PIL after CBI says all accused discharged by court for lack of evidence

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday formally buried the coffingate scandal, involving import of coffins, missiles and munitions at exorbitant prices allegedly for kickbacks, during the Kargil war. The irregularities had come to light after a CAG report highlighted them, estimating the loss at over Rs 24,000 cr.

A PIL had been filed shortly after in 2004 in the apex court seeking a CBI probe into the scam which caused much hue and cry in the public. The court had subsequently ordered the CBI to probe these allegations.

The top investigating agency had lodged an FIR in 2006 and after a probe filed a charge sheet against several accused including former Defence Minister George Fernandes and other top serving and retired army officials. But the trial court discharged all the accused in the case in Dec 2013 for lack of evidence.
On Monday, in a status report submitted to the top court, the CBI contended that the PIL had become irrelevant after the trial court discharged all the accused. The agency claimed it could not get enough evidence to establish guilt against the accused persons, including middlemen and foreign firms who received the kickbacks, despite efforts.

The purchases were made during the earlier NDA regime. The agency, through counsel R. Balasubramanian, told a bench headed by Justice T.S. Thakur, next in line to be the Chief Justice of India, that the PIL should be dismissed in the light of these developments.

The bench them dismissed the PIL, filed by lawyer K.G. Dhananjay Chouhan, which had alleged a huge scam in the post-Kargil purchases involving politicians, middlemen and several foreign firms.

It had also alleged massive irregularities in the purchase of snow suits, aluminum caskets from a US company, 1,000 terminally-guided munitions from Russian firm Karasnopol, anti-material rifles from South Africa and Barak missiles from Israel and procurement of armoured recovery vehicles from Slovakia.

The CBI registered a case in the Barak missile case in 2006 against Fernandes, his associate Jaya Jaitly, R.K. Jain, Sushil Kumar and arms dealer Suresh Nanda, but all of them were discharged in 2013.