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The Hawala scandal or hawala scam / Ghotala

The Hawala scandal or hawala scam was an Indian political scandal involving payments allegedly received by politicians through hawala brokers, the Jain brothers. It was a US$18 million dollar bribery scandal that implicated some of the country’s leading politicians. There were also alleged connections with payments being channelled to Hizbul Mujahideen militants in Kashmir.

Those accused included Lal Krishna Advani who was then Leader of opposition. He and others were acquitted in 1997 and 1998, partly because the hawala records (including diaries) were judged in court to be inadequate as the main evidence. The failure of this prosecution by the Central Bureau of Investigation was widely criticised.

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Hawala Bribery case is the name of the scam of $18 million (Indian Rs.650 million) allegedly paid by one Surindra Kumar Jain, to top Indian politicians and bureaucrats, between February 1988, and April 1991, through an illegally established foreign exchange called Hawala. This scam has poisoned the political atmosphere of India, the so called biggest democracy of the world, in such a way that it has overlapped the three major political parties of that country including the ruling Congress (I), Party, whose seven ministers had to resign. The major opposition party viz. The Hindu fund

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NEW DELHI, AUG 28: Former Chief Justice of India (CJI) J S Verma who headed the Bench that monitored the Jain-hawala case, today said investigating agencies had not done a satisfactory job in probing the case, otherwise it would not have been possible for all the charge-sheets to end up in a fiasco.

“The hawala case was one in which the Court had granted complete insulation to the investigating agencies from extraneous circumstances. We even relieved them of the power of supervision by the highest authority in the executive (the Prime Minister) and yet they could not perform,” Justice Verma said, adding this proved that mere insulation was not enough.

Verma said if after investigating and filing a charge-sheet, the accused had been discharged in every case, it only went to show that the agencies did not investigate properly so as to collect materials to be put up along with the charge-sheet.

“It appears clear now that they only put up an excuse of filing a charge-sheet because if the discharge of accused is justified then apparently there was no prima facie case put up along with the charge-sheet for the trial to commence,” Justice Verma said, adding that if there was no justification, no evidence available from the investigation, they should not have filed the charge-sheet