A super-sensitive project of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), codenamed ‘‘Divya Drishti,’’ has suffered a serious setback with a fraud being detected involving a key supplier of equipment for the Rs 570-crore mega surveillance system. The company is none other than Shoghi Communications, which has been the subject of investigations by The Indian Express and was subsequently blacklisted by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). It now transpires that Shoghi and its two sister concerns, Secure Telecom and Sidhi Tech, ended up being the only three companies shortlisted by DRDO’s high-level purchase committee for import of crucial components: frequency demodulators and surveillance monitors/receivers from two American firms, M/A-COM and DRS Technologies. Shoghi got the Divya Drishti contract in Feburary 2005, 18 months after the CBI sent out an advisory to all Government concerns, including the MoD, informing them about the company being chargesheeted for a forgery detected during import of surveillance equipment for the National Security Guards (NSG). The CBI sent a second advisory in June 2005 (first reported in The Indian Express, July 5, 2005) following which the MoD formally banned the three companies. The three companies shortlisted have the same family ownership and addresses and despite this, DRDO’s Hyderabad-based laboratory, the Defence Electronics Research Laboratory (DLRL), and Signals Intelligence selected just only these three for submitting tenders for the approximately Rs 20-crore contract. This, sources say, was a ‘‘back-channel’’ import since the DLRL (which is designing the project) and the Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL, which is handling its execution) were under US sanctions. The prestigious ‘‘Divya Drishti’’ project, conceived as an electronic system for tracking hostile airborne targets, got fresh impetus after the Kargil war. The scheduled completion of Phase-I of the project is 2007. After the ban, the MoD held an inquiry into all contracts given to the group and detected the illegality of the three companies being exclusively selected for ‘‘Divya Drishti’’ contracts. In September 2005, two months after the MoD’s ban, the ECIL was formally ordered by the MoD to disassociate itself with the banned entity, leading to a logjam which is still to be resolved. Over the past six months, the Shoghi consignments which contain crucial components for ‘‘Divya Drishti’’ are lying unclaimed at the Delhi Customs godown. It is understood that requests for lifting the consignments have been turned down by the MoD. While Harish Gupta, the proprietor of Shoghi could not be contacted, senior DRDO and ECIL officials confirmed details of the setback to the project due to the controversies surrounding the importer for its sub systems.
