Who is Adil Shahryar and why was
he part of Sushma's defence?
On Wednesday,
August 12, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj referred to Madhya Chief
Minister Arjun Singh's memoir as part of her response on the 'Lalitgate' issue.
Swaraj alleged
that then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi allowed Union Carbide Chairman Warren
Anderson safe passage after he was arrested for the Bhopal gas disaster to
secure the release of Adil Shahryar, the son of an old Nehru family friend, who
was serving 35 years in a US prison.
Who is Adil
Shahryar? Why was he imprisoned and what was his relationship to Rajiv Gandhi?
Adil Shahryar is the son of Muhammad
Yunus who was an old friend of the Nehru family, a nephew of Badshah Khan Khan
Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a former ambassador to Spain and long time chairman of the
Trade Fair Authority of India.
Shahryar was a
childhood friend of Rajiv Gandhi and his brother Sanjay Gandhi.
Shahryar was
arrested on August 30, 1981 by Florida state authorities in Miami on charges of
attempting to set fire to his room at the Sheraton Beach Hotel.
Shahryar was
tried on five counts: 1. attempting to firebomb a ship; 2. false statements on
various certificates in connection with the shipment; 3. mail fraud; 4. making
of a firearm (the bombs); and 5. use of a firearm (the bombs) in the commission
of a felony.
It was
established in court that Shahryar's company, the Caribbean International
Investment Corporation, had a contract with the Britain-based Shapton Products
Ltd to supply them with 25,000 video cassettes. It was also established that
Shahryar substituted the aforementioned shipment with scrap paper.
Shahryar
intended to set the shipment on fire in order to claim $243,750 (nearly Rs 2.2
million at the then exchange rates) from the American Express bank. Shahryar
claimed innocence of any scheme to defraud either the bank or Shapton.
Hollywood star Charlton Heston wrote to
then US attorney general William French Smith in 1982, asking him to intervene
in Shahryar's case.
The case was
assigned to Smith's then special assistant, John G Roberts Jr, now the Chief
Justice of the US Supreme Court.
Roberts
reviewed the case and prepared a memo clarifying that Heston's version of
events was incomplete.
He drafted a
letter from Smith that constituted a polite brush-off to Heston.
You can read
Heston letter's HERE.
In the aftermath of the Bhopal gas
tragedy, the Congress government, it is alleged, permitted then Union Carbide
chairman Warren Anderson to return to the US.
In 1985,
President Ronald Reagan commuted the sentences of 13 people who had been in
prison for violations of federal laws. Reagan signed the clemency papers on
June 11, 1985, the day Rajiv Gandhi arrived in Washington, DC, for a State
visit.
According to
Sushma Swaraj, quoting from then Madhya Pradesh chief minister Arjun Singh's
memoir, the Rajiv Gandhi government allowed Anderson to flee as a quid pro
quo arrangement with the US for giving Shahryar a presidential pardon.
At the time of
Shahryar's release, Rajiv Gandhi told India Abroad (the oldest and
best-known Indian-American newsweekly, which Rediff.com has owned
since April 27, 2001) that he had not asked that his friend's sentence be
commuted, but added, 'We do believe that he has been wrongly imprisoned.'
Image: Then
prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.
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