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CBI-Jaya row may have been sparked to sell Joginder book

N Sathiya Moorthy in Madras

Is there more to it than meets the eye in former Central Bureau of Investigation director Joginder Singh's claim that a former Union minister from Tamil Nadu sought to influence him to register a case against former chief minister J Jayalalitha?

Or, is it just a marketing ploy to sell his just-released book,Inside CBI ?

''Joginder Singh has stated nothing much, as the published extracts would show, nor has he answered the issues since raised by then minister of state for personnel S R Balasubramanian from the Tamil Maanila Congress. Unless he takes up the gauntlet, thrown at him by his detractors, it would turn out to be one more damp squib aimed at promoting his book,'' says an informed source.

As this source points out, controversy of one kind or the other had surrounded the release of books earlier by former President R Venkataraman and T N Seshan, after he had retired as the controversial chief election commissioner. ''As any discerning book-reader and political observer would tell you, there was nothing much controversial in these books for anyone to make as big an issue as were made out.''

According to this source in the publishing industry, the trend had set in with the publication of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses in India. ''Syed Shahabuddin made a big issue of it, and the book was banned in the country, long before Islamic nations took objection. Later, it turned out that Shahabuddin himself had not read the book, and was relying on published extracts or the like while coining his objections.''

All the published books of these authors, incidentally, became an instant draw, the source points out. And the Satanic Verses sold like hot-cakes in the blackmarket after the ban. This, when, as the source points out, the subtlety and the complexity of Rushdie's allegories would not have made any sense to most readers.

''Likewise, whatever controversy was sought to be raised by Venkataraman about Rajiv Gandhi was buried deep inside his My Presidential Years, which served no other historical or literary purpose,'' says the source.

Though he is not sure whether it is a coincidence in all the cases, the source says the pre-publication extracts did not stop with vetting the appetite of the intended reader.

''Those controversial sections were what those books were all about. There was nothing much readable elsewhere in the book, if at all you call these sections as controversial as made out to be by the publishers, the 'extract-seekers' among magazine editors and their reviewers.''

That includes Seshan's biography An Intimate Story by K Govindan Kutty. A controversial reference to the late C N Annadurai invited the wrath of his Dravidian followers in Tamil Nadu, leading to a court case and a subsequent withdrawal of the chapter. ''But not before the book had sold like hot-cakes both in the state and elsewhere in the country.''

''There is a reason for this,'' says the source, referring to Joginder Singh's book. ''He has only said that he was sought to be pressured by a then minister from Tamil Nadu for registering a CBI case against Jayalalitha for receiving $ 300,000 from overseas without revealing the source. Even Joginder Singh has not said, he was sought to be pressured into implicating Jayalalitha, or for filing a chargesheet against her. Why then mention it in the book, if it was not to boost its circulation?''

In this context, he refers to Balasubramanian's statement. ''As Balasubramanian has pointed out, the CBI had not filed the case in the first place, and was only asked to follow up on the case originally filed by the Tamil Nadu government. Given the involvement of foreign money transactions, the CBI alone was equipped to handle the case, and the question of implicating Jayalalitha would not have come until the investigations were completed.''

He may have a point. In this particular case at least, the CBI was asked to do only a 'postman's job', obtaining a letter rogatory from an Indian court and forwarding it to foreign governments, for follow-up investigations at their end. Only when the replies were received, and the Indian court handed them over to the CBI, would the investigating agency come into the picture, again.

That being the case, questions arise whether Joginder Singh's book would serve the purpose of seeking to divert the public attention from the ongoing trial in some corruption cases pending against Jayalalitha and her erstwhile ministerial colleagues.

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