A couple of months passed after my futile, and furtive, attempts to draw the attention of the Delhi media and activists to the Sabharwal letterbox. I had just done a story on Shweta Mahajan, the battered daughter-in-law of politician Pramod Mahajan, when MiD DAY decided to start an edition in Delhi, with me as its resident editor.
As the hunt for stories for the newspaper’s launch edition began, our thoughts turned to the letter box. A surreptitious walk down the road proved that the object of our journalistic affections still clung to the wall of Sabharwal’s house at 3/81 Punjabi Bagh, with the white lettering intact.
The story was alive and even though Sabharwal had just then retired as CJI, it was as valid. However, we now needed to follow up on our lead and prove that the companies mentioned on the letterbox were actually being run from the bungalow. We decided that the simplest way of doing that would be to establish that letters to Pawan Impex, Sab Exports, and Sug Exports were being delivered to 3/81 Punjabi Bagh. That entailed a visit to the local post office and a chat with the postman responsible for delivering mail on the street of Sabharwals’ bungalow.
On the prowl
I skipped our editorial meeting one morning and drove down to the local post office in East Punjabi Bagh, a short distance from my residence.
“I am looking for the postman who delivers letters on our lane,” I said to nobody in particular in the cramped office, conscious that I was being scanned like an envelop with no address. Perhaps I had overdone my effort to dress nattily in a salwar-kameez with jewellery to match. I thought the ruse was needed to pass off as a resident of 3/81 and thereby justify my claim to the mails getting delivered to the Sabharwal house.
“We seem to have lost a couple of letters so I thought I will check it out here personally. There’s one letter which is very important. We should have received it about a week ago, at 3/81,” I said.
“That income tax letter? I myself gave it to your servant yesterday. It was for Pawan Impex.”
Bingo! I could actually see Lady Luck smile down upon me at that moment. The tall, scruffy postman who spoke to me was responsible for delivering letters on Road# 81 and was the first to confirm that the companies mentioned on Sabharwals’ letterbox were indeed running business from the house.
The team was jubilant. This was just a baby step but we could sense we were reaching somewhere. We now needed to be absolutely sure that the three companies were indeed registered at Sabharwal’s bungalow and decided to check out the Registrar of Companies for details of the firms. None of us had ever reported on business and it was left to our brilliant legal reporter, Praveen Kumar, to approach the Registrar of Companies. After considerable sweat and tears, we found out that the process was extremely simple. Anyone could create a log-in and access a company’s records on the internet site of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Alternatively, we could file an application with the ministry and physically verify the files.
City Editor M K Tayal and Praveen Kumar created an account on the Ministry’s website but then we were stuck…
None of us had a credit card and the website required an access fee of Rs 50 that had to be paid by a credit card. I finally borrowed the credit card of our office manager on the promise that I would hand in receipts for the money spent so that he might claim it later from office. Little did I know then that the strict eye which the accounting department kept on all expenditure by senior employees would be my savior later on. Those receipts, painstakingly printed off for our manager each time we accessed the records of Sabharwals’ companies, later became valuable proof of our honest legwork on the story.
All it took was monumental patience with a slow internet connection and a measly Rs 200 or so to download documents from the ministry’s website, confirming that the three companies, Sab Exports, Sug Exports and Pawan Impex, had their registered offices at the residence of Y K Sabharwal and these were in the name of his sons- Chetan and Nitin.
We now had copies of the registration papers and certificates of incorporation filed by the three companies, each of which had given 3/81, Punjabi Bagh as the address of their registered office.
To be Continued
Next – Look What We Found!
Time&Tide 