BSNL scam: Wake up Maran, the call's lost

The heat is on. And the Maran brothers are wilting under it. After being questioned recently in the Aircel Maxis case, the next blow came in the form of arrests of Sun TV officials and Dayanidhi Maran's former PA V Gauthaman last night. These arrests have been made in the BSNL Exchange case - in which the Maran brothers are accused of having set up a virtual telephone exchange at the house of then telecom minister Daya Maran to enable data transfer of the Sun TV group owned by brother Kalanithi Maran. More than 300 high-speed telephone lines were alleged to have been set up for the Sun Group by BSNL.

Witch-hunt, cried Dayanidhi Maran, as he gave a statement to reporters waiting outside the house of his grandfather and DMK chief M Karunanidhi. "The CBI should be a fact-finding machine and not a fixing one. I am being singled out. CBI is fixing me to please an RSS ideologue from Tamil Nadu," he said, obviously rattled. Maran also alleged that the CBI was using "third degree tactics" to get his former aide and the others to make a "false statement" against him.

It was a statement along the lines one would expect Daya Maran to make. He blamed an RSS ideologue from Tamil Nadu, a veiled reference to S Gurumurthy, who first wrote about the BSNL Exchange scam in a Southern newspaper in 2011. Maran went on to cast aspersions on a "father and son duo" who he alleged were working against the DMK. This was a reference, presumably to Congress leader P Chidambaram and his son Karti. To another television channel, Maran said the Centre was targeting him to try and please AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa! Going by his statements, it appears the "witch hunt" is a big party with the BJP, Congress and AIADMK all hand in glove.

Just desserts, said a firm Gurumurthy, the man who first exposed the BSNL exchange scam. "The CBI wrote to the UPA government in June 2007 itself, asking for permission to probe him," he said. "I wrote about this four years later. In 2007, the Marans were out of favour with the DMK and the probe was initiated. Later, the bonhomie between the two was restored and the probe slowed down," he said. "Maran has gone mad! If he calls this a witch hunt, he must surely be mad. This government did not initiate the probe, the previous government did it. This government is simply carrying out the probe. How can it be revenge? Maran must first explain why the UPA government kept quiet for seven years without carrying out the probe," he chuckled.

Gurumurthy asks why Maran did not file a legal suit against him in 2011 when he exposed the BSNL exchange scam. "He sent me a legal notice saying he would file a suit against me for Rs 10 crores," said Gurumurthy. "At that time he was Minister. Why did he not file the suit?"

The voices singing "just desserts" are of a sizeable number in Tamil Nadu. Ask the once-upon-a-time competitors to the Marans in the cable business, the television business or any of the other pies that they have their fingers in. A unanimous hatred of the Marans abounds and this is largely due to the trail of arm-twisting, violence and unethical business practices attributed to the Maran brothers. Power, they say, has been exploited by them ruthlessly to build their business empire. Ask Sharad Kumar of Kalaignar TV fame who was once beaten and suffered broken bones when he crossed the Marans. Or ask the cable operators whose cables were cut by Maran's men. Ask the television channels who were forced to pay arbitrarily exorbitant fees to Maran-owned Sumangali Cable Vision, which had the monopoly of the cable distribution business in the state when the DMK was in power. "Just desserts" is a continuous theme in this song.

So what is wrong if a witch hunt is launched, as long as the prey deserves it? The BSNL exchange case comes with solid evidence of cables laid underground and a telephone exchange set up in Daya Maran's house. Let the CBI do its job. Let the courts do their job. If innocent, the Marans will walk away. If not, let the witch hunt begin.