Time&Tide

Well Connected

Familiarity breeds contempt, but realistically speaking, it is far more proficient at nurturing blind spots. BPTP’s offices were located in DCM building, directly opposite Arunachal building on Barakhamba Marg where MiD DAY’s offices had existed for years. Like many things which would come to us later as we chased this story, the huge BPTP hoardings had been staring us in the face all these years but had never been noticed.

A day after our trip to the residence of Anjali and Kabul Chawla at 7A Amrita Shergill Marg,  City Editor M K Tayal, photographer Rajeev Tyagi, and I  went exploring again, this time the DCM building. The sales office of  BPTP was plastered with pictures of different projects of the company, most of them malls and office complexes. While photographer Rajeev Tyagi got busy with his camera, City Editor M K Tayal and I went upstairs to the main offices, with a fake introduction at the reception. We now were prospective tenants. “We want to rent a shop in one of your malls. We have a shop in Kamala Nagar but we want to shift from there to a mall,” we told the smarmy sales executive who met us. I am quite convinced that the man was not taken in by our story, specially when Tayal and I looked completely nonplussed, at a loss for words after he asked us what it was that we sold in our shop.

“Kids’ garments. We sell children’s clothing,” blurted Tayal, whose best friend actually ran a garments’ shop in Kamala Nagar. Perhaps real-life-would-be-renters of a posh mall behave the way we did- intimidated, uncertain, conscious of stretching out several notches above themselves on the economic ladder, and hanging in there by the fingernails.  However, knowing that we were lying through our teeth made matters far worse for us than for any wannabe petty shopkeeper.

The salesperson gave us detailed information about the different malls of BPTP where shops were available. We assured him of our serious interest in renting a premise and left, clutching a colourful folder which contained everything on the company’s activities, its size and the scale of its operations. It also described in detail how leading multi-national brands such as Adidas, McDonalds, Lee, Lee Cooper, Benetton, Levis,Woodland and Nike all chose to have their outlets in malls built by BPTP.

BPTP, the owners of which had partnered with the Sabharwals in their firm with a paid up capital of Rs 1 lakh, was a gargantuan Rs 232 crore company. It had developed landmark malls, including CTC at Najafgarh Road, CBD at Surajmal Vihar in East Delhi, and Shop-In Park at Shalimar Bagh, besides several other commercial and residential complexes. BPTP was also coming up with malls and commercial complexes in Faridabad, Gurgaon and Noida, and the company’s clients included the virtual who’s who of MNCs, looking for a foothold in India to capture its cash-rich middle class.

The very same BPTP had opted to become a partner in a company with a paid up capital of Rs 1 lakh!

We came out with another page one story on Sabharwal on May 18, 2007: ‘Mall-aa-Mall.’ It detailed the close business relationship between the two sons of Justice Sabharwal and BPTP. We duly published the partnership documents between the Chawlas and the Sabharwals, as proof that we were telling the truth and nothing but the truth.

Footprints in Stone

This was the first time we played on the word ‘mall’ – which in the English language means a conglomerate of shops but is a vulgar variant of money ( maal) in Hindi. “Mall-aa-Mall” lent itself to interpretation. Our next story the following day, on May 19, 2007, was titled ‘Gol Mall Hai’ (There is Something Fishy). The story showed the footprints which led to MiD DAY’s expose of the links between the Sabharwals and mall developers BPTP, with documentary proof.

We enjoyed the wordplay on ‘mall’, our team of designers, reporters, and sub-editors. The headlines for the Sabharwal series, hammered out in the wee hours of the morning as we crowded around our designers setting out the front page,  were a collective effort, as was most of the Sabharwal story. The teamwork bonded us, as we dug in our heels and prepared for a battle which we were sure would follow our pitchforking on the website of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.

So why did the Chawlas invest in Pawan Impex, a company with an extremely humble share capital of Rs 1 lakh?

According to the list of shareholders of Pawan Impex available on the Ministry’s website, as of September 30, 2006, Kabul and Anjali held 7.5 lakh shares, valued at Rs 75 lakh each, thereby making a direct investment of Rs 1.5 crore in the company. An extraordinary general meeting of Pawan Impex on June 21, 2006 decided to dramatically increase the authorised share capital of the company from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 3 crore. The company had been showing Rs 1 lakh as its nominal capital ever since its registration in 2002.

We had the online records from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs but we were not satisfied. We wanted to be doubly sure of our facts. Tayal, legal correspondent Praveen Kumar, and I went to the Ministry’s records section to take a look at the physical files relating to the Sabharwal companies. Entry to the records section was restricted.  We were not allowed to carry a camera, cellphone, or even a pen into the dusty and dilapidated room, supervised by a clerk with the skills of an invigilator in an examination centre. He watched us with an eagle eye as another clerk brought out the files we had requested. We sat on long wooden benches, reverentially holding the files before us, and scribbled notes in pencil. All the documents pertaining to the partnership between the Sabharwals and the Chawlas were there in the files. They told us nothing more than what the online records did. But the yellowing papers we shook awake from their eternal slumber in dusty file folders, gave us confidence that there was no digital illusion about the Ministry’s website. The sons of the former chief justice of India were in partnership with leading mall builders at a time when he was the presiding officer in the sealing case.

On May 25, we did another story, producing documents to show that BPTP was a 50 per cent partner in Pawan Impex, the company of the Sabharwals . The story was headlined : ‘Lift Kara De’   and  gave documentary proof that leading builders of the country had invested in the company of Justice  Sabharwal’s sons  when he was directing the demolition drive in Delhi as the chief justice of India.

The headline played on Adnan Sami’s  popular Hindi song of the day, beseeching god for a ‘lift’ in life. It befitted the saga of a small company snagging a multi-billion partnership.

Notice and One Queer Duck

To be Coninued