In the case of heat-resistant Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) computer chips for the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), which the FBI claims, could be used for missile-launch systems, Cirrus allegedly violated US Department of Commerce rules that shipping such items to any organisation in the prohibited list of entities needed a license.

VSSC is in that list and the procedures for such licenses are stringent.

The indictment states that on one occasion in May 2003, the Phoenix-based vendor requested “an end-use statement for 10 SRAMs”. To this, Sampath Sundar, Cirrus’s Director of Operations in Singapore, sent an e-mail “falsely identifying the end-user of the SRAMs as the Naval Physical & Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL) in Kochi...and the end-use as the development of electronic hardware for oceanographic instrument.”

More than a year later, in September 2004, the vendor sent an e-mail to Cirrus disclosing that it found the NPOL end-user statements “fraudulent” and that it was ending all business and was even considering to report the matter.

At this point, the indictment states, Sudarshan wrote an e-mail to Mythili Gopal and his Cirrus Bangalore head A K N Prasad: “On reading the e-mails (from vendor) do not get panic. At the end of the game, it is I...who needs to face the music”. He instructed Prasad, according to the indictment, to “go to VSSC and explain them that our intention is not to make profit on this order but to service VSSC and ascertain if VSSC has got some clout over NPOL”.