Gold Souk to FM’s office,this snoop firm has a broad sweep

BCL’s website states that its Managing Director is S K Gupta who retired as Joint Director (Technical) of the Intelligence Bureau and has decades of experience in the security business. The company employs several former Army and Air Force officials and on its Board of Directors is Vikram Sood,the former head of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW).

On BCL’s “list of clients” are the Embassies of Argentina and Qatar,Gurgaon’s Gold Souk,Uttarakhand Police,Alacatel-Lucent and Videocon.

The hiring of the private firm — which has a large detective unit handling “market intelligence” for corporates — has raised key questions.

For one,under what financial guidelines was BCL paid for the assignment? Who cleared the payment? Why was a private security firm run by an ex-IB official brought into North Block and not the IB itself?

Gupta has made himself incommunicado since and did not respond to calls and messages from The Indian Express. A visit to “Flower Valley” only yielded interactions with officials from the administration and HR departments of the company,who told The Indian Express they had no idea about specific field assignments.

“It is only Mr Gupta who can help you with results of specific investigations but he has not been coming to office for the past few days,”’ said a BCL official.

Similarly,CBDT officials have refrained from divulging details about the operation. What is known is that around a year ago,the CBDT made a formal proposal to the Finance Ministry for the purchase of surveillance and debugging equipment and that the proposal was still in the discussion stage when the unprecedented request for a non-IB team to do a electronic sweep was made by the Finance Ministry.

Sudhir Chandra was then CBDT’s Member (Investigations) who called in BCL.

Sources said the company’s technical unit arrived in a strength of over 10 members with sophisticated surveillance equipment. After finding what the Finance Minister — in his September 7,2010 letter to the Prime Minister — called “plantable adhesive substances”,it was S K Gupta who briefed the FM’s advisor,Omita Paul,and Chandra about the “porous points” in the FM’s office and possible points for planting bugs.

“For days after the sweeping operation,we were speaking in whispers even in our own office,” a CBDT top official told The Indian Express.

The security paranoia that gripped North Block had a multiple effect. For one,the CBDT investigation wing acquired the much delayed consignment of surveillance equipment (costing around Rs 25 lakh) and trained a team of inspectors to regularly sweep the chambers of the Finance Minister and his aides.

And after September 7,once the IB was assigned by the Cabinet Secretary to check the Finance Minister’s complaint,the Government agency,too,has left nothing to chance. The IB’s sweeping team,sources said,has since September last,been spotted in the chambers of the Finance Minister over a dozen times.