CBI struggles to nab accused in telecom scandal

patna: the central bureau of investigation (cbi) is faced with the daunting task of locating the two key accused of the patna telephone scandal, taufiq ahmad and rajiv kumar, the proprietors of the transworld placement services and the rajiv traders respectively who between them owed rs 60 lakh to the telecom department. with the cbi investigation revealing that a large number of international calls to pakistan, saudi arabia, nepal, uae, yemen and qatar were made from telephone number 211438 owned by taufiq's transworld placement services, the case has taken a sensational turn.telephone number 211512 allotted to the rajiv traders was used for making long std calls. although the fir lodged by the cbi on april 6 against 9 persons including taufiq, rajiv and 7 patna telephone officials does not refer to any isi links of the aforesaid firms, sources in the investigating agency said that it would be carrying out an indepth enquiry into the case covering every aspect since all the international calls were made before the kargil war. the case has assumed significance since transworld placement services and rajiv traders located side by side at buddha plaza on buddha marg ran up a mammoth telephone bills of about rs.60 lakh in a short span of less than five months only. the two firms were provided isd and std connections in december 1998 under own your telephone(oyt) category. the first bi-monthly bill of taufiq was of rs.1,200/ only while rajiv's bill was only rs.900 only. both the bills were cleared too. thereafter began their real game as between january to may 1999 the two firms ran up a staggering telephone bill of about rs.60 lakh. by the time the patna telephone authorities woke up from their slumber and disonnected both the telephones on july 2, 1999 both taufiq and rajiv had disappeared from the scene giving dodge to the telephone authorities leaving their rented offices abandoned. the patna telephone auhtorities could retrieve the two telephone sets only. the cbi sleuths too have so far failed to locate taufiq and rajiv. a cbi team which visited buddha plaza in search of the two returned empty handed.sources said that the investigating agency would now examine the owner of the flat hired by taufiq and rajiv to know their permanent address. the agency may even seek the help of interpol to track down the numbers at which the international calls were made. the other seven accused figuring the fir are; divisional engineer commercial, patna telephone a j khan, senior accounts officer g p sharma, section supervisor commercial section patna telephone kanhai lal, sdo commercial munnan prasad, jto madhusudan mahto, technical assistant ajay kumar and tao sunil kumar. speaking on the condition of anonymity a top telecom official admitted that the department had erred in providing isd and std connections to both taufiq and rajiv without asking for their photographs, pan numbers and carrying out identification of the place where the two telephones were to be installed. one of these two accused had the auducity to submit the photograph of another person. the incident has also makes it clear that the monitoring of the heavy callers by the patna telephone was poor to say the least. in 1996 too the cbi had lodged a case against a few officials of aurangabad telephone exchange who had allegedly ran a racket of providing isd call facility to people at a concessional rate and then misappropriated the entire amount collected from them causing huge revenue loss to the department, cbi sources said adding that even in that case the agency had sought the help of interpoll. the cbi investigation into the 1996 case is almost complete.