A Gripping Saga of India’s Most Sensational Crime | M.R. Narayan Swamy

BOOK REVIEW

The Scam That Shook a Nation: The Nagarwala Scandal

by Prakash Patra, Rasheed Kidwai

HarperCollins India
Pages: xi + 263; Price: Rs 399

It is a story that has been told, literally, a million times. But when Prakash Patra and Rahseed Kidwai, two extremely capable journalists, recap the story with their penchant for thorough research, it becomes a book you just cannot put down.

The sensational incident which the book recaps took place in May 1971, thanks to a thoroughly unscrupulous conman, Rustom Sohrab Nagarwala, and a foolish and naïve chief cashier at the State Bank of India (SBI), Ved Prakash Malhotra.

Nagarwala, a former Indian soldier and later virtually jobless, was visiting the SBI’s Parliament Street branch in the heart of New Delhi to get change for 100 rupees when a spur of the moment idea hit him. After quickly finding out the name and telephone number of the chief cashier, Nagarwala made a quick call to him from a public phone.

He first tweaked his voice to claim he was P.N. Haksar, the private secretary to the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. The supposed Haksar said Rs 60 lakhs in cash was urgently needed by the Prime Minister for a covert operation in the then East Pakistan. When Malhotra expressed some hesitancy over handing over such a huge amount of money, ‘Haksar’ handed over the phone to ‘Indira Gandhi’.

Now speaking in the Prime Minister’s voice, Nagarwala repeated what ‘Haksar’ had stated earlier and went on to give further instructions on how, where and to who to hand over the money. Malhotra, one of the millions who were victims of India’s 1947 partition, was thrilled that he was speaking to Indira Gandhi, a leader he clearly adored. He carried out the directions faithfully, inadvertently unleashing a crime that shook India.

It didn’t take long for the police to step in when Malhotra realized that he had become a victim of an elaborate fraud. Partly due to the immaturity of Nagarwala, the police managed to arrest him within hours and recover most of the stolen money. To his credit, Nagarwala confessed that his was a one-man operation and that Malhotra was completely innocent.

The book, however, tells us that what could have been an open-and-shut case became very murky after the opposition and a section of the media began to insinuate that somehow Indira Gandhi was involved in the crime. Looking back, it is clear the daylight robbery was God send to an opposition which was finding it difficult to checkmate Indira Gandhi.

Unfortunately for everyone, Nagarwala died on his 50th birthday in 1972 due to a massive heart attack while in judicial custody, giving rise to rumours that he may have been done away with. Already, D.K. Kashyap, the chief investigator in Delhi Police who probed the Nagarwala case, was killed in a road accident in November 1971, generating speculation that he had been silenced as he knew too much. The reality is that Nagarwala died in hospital, and there was no foul play, and Kashyap’s death occurred due to a genuine accident on the highway to Delhi. But the damage had been done.

Nagarwala knew English, French, German and Japanese; he also spoke Punjabi well and could converse in broken Hindi. The authors say he always had a love for easy money, a trait that would one day cost him dearly. At one time, even as drifted from one place to another with no fixed income, Nagarwala fell in love with an American diplomat in Delhi, Jeanette Spears. The affair raised many eyebrows both when he was alive and when the Janata Party government set up a judicial panel to probe the Nagarwala episode.

It was wrong on the part of Indira Gandhi to have maintained complete silence after the scandal broke, baffling everyone, the media included. This naturally led to numerous, unnecessary and illogical assumptions including that both Malhotra and Nagarwala were known to the Prime Minister, that the money taken out of the SBI was meant for Sanjay Gandhi’s fledgling Maruti project, and that Nagarwala made a confession to save Indira Gandhi from embarrassment and because he was promised he would be let off quietly.

The hatred Morarji Desai and Charan Singh had for Indira Gandhi added to her vilification although she had nothing to do with the crime. Charan Singh claimed, wrongly, that Malhotra was employed by Maruti after being dismissed by the SBI. Desai made equally bizarre allegations, going to the extent of saying that the money could not have belonged to the SBI! Notwithstanding some technical mistakes Delhi Police made, the case was resolved and was officially closed in January 1981, a year after Indira Gandhi returned to power.

Perhaps the one man who was the biggest victim of the Nagarwala scandal was Malhotra, who was unceremoniously sacked from the SBI and whose pension and provident funds were withheld.

This is a gripping book – a sure page-turner. Entire generations who may not know what really happened in 1971 must read this work. It was illuminating even to me although I was growing up during the years the crime caused an explosion. The overconfident Nagarwala did the impossible – and almost got away with it.