by ARVIND GUNASEKAR
The recordings – 84 of them – have been submitted by the Enforcement Directorate to a Delhi court to help nail Sukesh Chandrashekhar, who has been in jail since 2017.
While a former billionaire is in jail, his wife spends hours on the phone discussing payments to obtain bail for him. She seems to believe that she is talking to senior government officials, including the Home Secretary of the country. She asks for a meeting with the Home Minister – and is told it will happen in due time if she “co-operates.” She discusses money that was paid without the promised results. She talks of money given by her to “a party fund.”
It takes months for her to discover that her conversations are with an impersonator, that she has been scammed for crores. After being alerted by the Enforcement Directorate in July, she starts recording the chats. She then hands these over to the Enforcement Directorate. And files a case with the Delhi Police alleging extortion and cheating adding up to 200 crores.
This is a story packed with twists. The biggest of which is that the man who was calling her was doing so from prison. He had access to a cellphone and used software that allowed him to ‘replicate’ or ‘spoof’ the phone numbers of top government officers.
The recordings – 84 of them – have been submitted by the Enforcement Directorate to a Delhi court to help nail Sukesh Chandrashekhar, who has been in jail since 2017.
The woman who helped ‘sting’ him is Aditi Singh, whose husband, Shivinder Singh, at one time co-owned pharma giant Ranbaxy with his brother, Malvinder Singh. Shivinder Singh was arrested in 2019 on charges of money laundering.
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