Not less than Rs 50 to 60 crore had been paid to Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav by Dr S B Sinha, the main accused in the Fodder Scam. Hearsay has it that a Rajya Sabho MP had acted as a conduit for Mr Yadav to stash away the monies in deposits held with bankÅ› abroad. N N Vohra in the PMO told me that I should send a fax stating that Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav should not be arrested. I said thai Iwould not do that unless the Government gave the order in writing.

During my stewardship, a complaint was received from the State Government of Tamilnadu that Jayalalitha hadreceived gifts running into crores of rupees on her

birthday. A Central Minister from Tamilnadu in the Gowda Government tried all he could to pressurise me to pursue the case. However, no case could be made as she had seemingly declared all such income to the Income Tax and

other agencies

Deve Gowda, the then Prime Minister, gave me a hand- written slip from Gujral which read, "Yesterday, I met Mr P V Narasimha Rao. He was complaining that the CBI is not helping him in the JMM bribery case". The burden of Gujral's note and the telephonic conversation, which he had with Mr Gowda in my presence, was that CBI should file an affidavit saying that Shailendra Mahto, a self-confessed accused who had made a confession before the judicial officer, was an unreliable witness

Chandrika

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