A28 US NEWS India Abroad October 23, 2009

Envoy Meera Shankar

PARESH GANDHI
SHEELA BHATT
IN NEW DELHI
What, asks a senior government official who is part of a
team following up official action on its contents, was the
motive for India’s Ambassador to the United States Meera
Shankar sending a letter May 12, containing allegations of
raises corruption charges
corruption to T K A Nair, principal secretary to the Indian
prime minister?
The letter lists eight instances of corruption involving five
Indian ministries including the ministry of defense, uncov-
ered by the US Anti Corruption Enforcement. The
instances came to light because of the US law known as the
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act according to which
American companies are mandated to testify before the
Anti Corruption Enforcement authorities about any illegal
payments made in foreign countries.
The letter contains details of illegal payments by Mario
Covino of Control Companies to the Maharashtra State
Electricity Board; by Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies
Corporation to the Indian Railways; by International Cor-
poration to various officials in India and other countries; by
AT Kearney India to state-owned enterprises; by Dow
Chemicals to India’s Central Insecticides Board and by
Pride International to an unnamed government official in
India.
The official says the ambassador’s letter is anomalous on
two counts. Firstly, no ambassador writes directly to the
principal secretary to the prime minister; envoys generally
correspond with the foreign secretary, who at the time of
the incident was Shivshankar Menon.
The timing, the official points out, is equally mysterious –
the letter was written after voting had been completed in
the general election to Parliament, but before the counting
of votes.
Sources in the PMO told India Abroad the letter was
received in mid-May. On June 1, the PMO wrote to the
Department of Personnel and Training, which is that
branch of the government dealing with the bureaucracy,
including questions of bureaucratic corruption, to inquire
about the contents of the letter.
The department submitted its findings August 10, and
said among other things that the case relating to corruption
by Dow Chemicals is ‘an old case’, and that the CBI is
already looking into it. Shankar’s letter had said the com-
pany had allegedly bribed officers of the ‘insecticides
department’ to get relevant permission to place their prod-
ucts on the Indian market.
Eight days later, the PMO responded to this letter,
instructing the department to proceed with its inquiries
without any delay. The department filed an action taken
report with the PMO October 9.
The Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, which acquired
a copy of the letter, promptly used it as a stick to beat the
government with. Questioning the government over the
delay in releasing its contents, the BJP in a statement said
it ‘amounts to shielding the corrupt. This means that the
government does only pep talk on the issue of corruption.
It seems the government, which is bent upon helping con-
troversial (Italian businessman Ottavio) Quattrocchi, has
lost any nerve to fight corruption.’
The party ended up with a face full of egg when inquiries
revealed that seven of the eight cases of corruption detailed
in Shankar’s letter dates back to when the BJP-led National
Democratic Alliance government was in power.

Spate of burglaries has Fairfax residents in panic

GEORGE JOSEPH
Seven burglaries targeting Indian homes in
the first week of October have created a
sense of panic in Fairfax County, Virginia.
The Reston, Fair Oaks, Sully and McLean
areas of Fairfax County have seen 24 bur-
glaries this year, most of the victims being
Indian Americans.
“Altogether, we have lost millions worth
of jewelry, electronics, other valuables,
passports etc,” said Raman Kumar, one of
the earliest victims of the spate of burgla-
ries that began last October and escalated
this month.
“People have lost the feeling of safety. I go
home from work once or twice every day to
check if everything is OK,” said Abdulrahi
Roda, whose house was one of four bur-
glarized October 7. Though she is a Somali,
Roda, who lost gold jewelry inherited from
her grandmother, lives next door to
Ramasamy, an Indian American whose
house was also robbed the same day. “The
robbers probably thought she was an
Indian too,” Ramaswamy said.
“The thieves seem to know where exactly
the gold is kept,” said Roda, who works in
the Fairfax School System. “They entered
the house through the backdoor, removing
it. There was no fingerprint or any other
evidence. These are professional people,
getting bolder and bolder every day. I hope
they will be caught before there’s a loss of
life.” The local police station is not far away
from her home.
Ramasamy, whose losses include a lap-
top, other electronic items and his wife’s
gold chain, has begun taking precautions
like depositing the family’s jewels, pass-
ports etc in a safe deposit locker. “The gold
chain was kept along with fake jewelry,”
Ramaswamy said. “My wife often com-
plained that she could not make out the
gold one from the fakes. The thieves had
no such problem – they took the gold
chain and left the fake ones untouched,” he
said.
Ramasamy said once his children leave
for school around 8:45 am, his home stands
empty till his wife Meena returns around
2:45 pm. In an increasingly common
modus operandi, the thieves came through
the rear window, removing it without
breaking the glass. They ransacked the bed-
rooms and the living room and left the
other rooms untouched.
“More than the loss, it has become a psy-
chological issue. We come home fearing it
will be looted or that somebody is still
inside. The feeling of security has van-
ished,” Ramasamy said.
Raman Kumar, who lost jewelry and elec-
tronics, says he is unlikely to get insurance
cover as he had not insured the jewels sep-
arately. The Puvvada family lost $47,000
worth of jewelry, cameras, a laptop, cam-
corders and four wedding saris October 6.
Another Indian family nearby was burglar-
ized the same day.
Himadhar Puvvada had installed a high
tech security system in June after hearing
tales of burglaries in the area. However, the
burglars disabled the alarm system before
raiding his home. Wife Vindhya says she is
now scared to enter the house alone, and
tends to wait in the driveway with her 20-
month-old child until her husband returns
from work.
The Puvvada home did not have any reli-
gious markings on the door or iconic dis-
plays outside the home. Earlier this year, it
had been noticed that the burglars targeted
homes that had Hindu symbols, like the
idol of Lord Ganesh, outside their homes
and garages.
The police in a statement in August sug-
gested that the robberies were the work of a
gang who used the religious symbols to
identify homes, bargaining on the fact that
Hindus have a penchant for gold jewelry.
A few of the victims have told the police
of seeing a white or silver Jeep Cherokee
containing a woman with red hair and two
men in their twenties. It is believed that the
woman knocks on the front door to ascer-
tain if there is anyone there and, once the
house is found to be empty, her male
accomplices make their way to the back to
effect an entry.
With the police without new leads, area
residents have sought the intervention of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and
sent petitions to President Barack Obama
and Senator Mark Warner, who represents
the district.
In an online petition presented to the
authorities, residents have demanded that
the police set up a task-force to catch the
burglars. ‘We strongly believe that all these
burglaries are orchestrated by an organized
gang of burglars who have sophisticated
equipment to detect gold, duplicate securi-
ty codes and enter homes without setting
off alarms,’ the petition says.
‘We have incidents where they even stole
passports, Green Cards and social security
cards, which raise the issue of national
security. We would like to also urge the
involvement of the FBI. Since these inci-
dents, we are faced with financial losses,
emotional trauma, and feel let down due to
lack of attention and resources in solving
this serious problem.’
The petition points out that when a simi-
lar spate of burglaries occurred in
Woodlands, Texas, authorities there
assigned 10 detectives in special patrols to
address the issue. The gang was captured
within two days, the petition points out,
while asking for similar initiatives from the
Fairfax police.