INDIA BUSINESS WORLD - JUNE 2006
THE MONTH THAT WAS...

RAHUL MAHAJAN GETS BAIL, PROSECUTION BAD PUBLICITY

   TEN days after he was arrested on charges of drug-abuse, Rahul Mahajan, son of the late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, walked free when a special court granted him bail. The special court's decision to allow the bail comes after the prosecution failed to produce concrete evidence to prove the charges slapped on Rahul under Section 25 of the NDPS Act, which is non-bailable. The section applies to a person who is found in possession of over 2 gm of cocaine or 5 gm of heroin.

Special court judge Swarna Kanta Mehra granted bail on the submitting a bond of Rs 2 lakh and a surety of the same amount. Rahul has been asked to submit his passport and not to leave Delhi without permission of the court until a chargesheet is filed against him. Faced with a court deadline to file a status report on investigation against Apollo Hospital, the police claimed to have enough evidence to prove that tampering with Rahul's medical records was done “at the highest level” to botch up the case.

It is alleged that the hospital destroyed evidence during the two-hour gap between Rahul's admission to the hospital on June 2 and informing of the police. According to sources, Apollo head Prathap C Reddy and his aide Ms Raji Chandru were in touch with Pramod Mahajan's secretary Harish Sharma during the night of the incident. Phone records of the three show that they had made several calls to one another between 2.55 am and 5 am on June 2. The police believe that it was Ms Raji who picked up the tab for Rahul's treatment at the hospital. Investigators are likely to question Mr Reddy and Ms Raji soon about the delay in informing the police about the incident, especially since a known public figure was involved in it. “If they (hospital) would have informed us on time, we would have been able to collect more evidence from the scene ,” police sources told agencies.

THE Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory's interim report on the gastric lavage of Rahul Mahajan has shown metabolites of heroin and cocaine. But police sources said there was no presence of alcohol. The gastric lavage of Vivek Moitra showed the presence of ethanol besides metabolites of heroin and cocaine. Heroin changes its form once it mixes with the gastric juices of the stomach while cocaine remains unchanged. The two gastric lavages were part of the five samples handed over to the CFSL on June 3 by the Delhi Police. The mass spectro photometric test and Thin Layer Chromotographic (TLC) on stained clothes of Mahajan and Moitra too found stains of the two substances.