THE AGE OF ENDLINGS

Explorations and Investigations into the Indian Wild

By Jay Mazoomdaar

NOW IN STORES. ALSO ON AMAZON, FLIPKART ETC

Endling (noun) The very last individual of a species. 

These are not trophy tales of the wildlife photographer or his ancestor, the hunter. Nor are these entreaties of the save-the-world variety. Curious and clinical, irreverent but reasoned, these essays and exposes by one of India’s best-known investigative journalists and wildlife reporters, Jay Mazoomdaar, raise fascinating questions to better understand the Human-Nature interfaces in an increasingly crowded and edgy India. 

Alongside the gripping whodunit and the sobering myth-buster are the stories of a cursed river, a tiger reserve on sale, a desert snake that ‘breathes’ death, a tribe that threatens to die if forced out of its forests and a species destined to become the loneliest on earth. 

The result of over a decade of investigations in the Indian wild and the human ecosystem around it, The Age of Endlings is as compelling as it is unflinching.

Harper Litmus | June 2016

Under ED heat, Robert Vadra’s firm sheds pvt ltd tag

The Indian Express, 26 June 2016

BARELY A month before the Enforcement Directorate issued a notice under provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to Sky Light Hospitality Pvt Ltd, owned by Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra, he had converted the private limited company to a limited liability partnership (LLP).

Private limited companies need to comply with extensive regulatory requirements, but a limited liability partnership only needs to file its annual returns and statements of account and solvency. Even auditing is not a mandatory requirement for LLPs, which enjoy further flexibility in functions, such as ease of dissolution, etc.

According to records maintained by the Registrar of Companies (RoC), Sky Light Hospitality LLP came into being on May 13, 2016, with Vadra and his mother Maureen Vadra as directors. The records also show that the new entity’s listed address in Delhi — 268 Sukhdev Vihar — is the same as that of Sky Light Hospitality Pvt Ltd registered in 2007.

Responding to a request for comment by The Sunday Express, Robert Vadra’s office stated in an email on Wednesday that it had been referred to the company’s lawyers and chartered accountants. “They will examine the same and will revert in due course,” said spokesperson Manoj Arora in the email.

On Wednesday, Vadra’s wife Priyanka Vadra had confirmed that the firm linked to her husband had received an ED notice in connection with alleged money-laundering in a land deal in Bikaner.

In its notice, ED asked Sky Light to submit financial statements and other documents related to the reported purchase of 275 bighas in the Kolayat area. Last year, the agency had registered a criminal case of money-laundering on the basis of FIRs based on a complaint lodged by the local tehsildar.

Other companies set up by Vadra and his mother have witnessed similar changes in structure. On April 24, 2015, the duo set up Blue Breeze Trading LLP and subsequently dissolved Blue Breeze Trading Pvt Ltd, another company linked to the controversial land deals in Bikaner.

Records show that the duo started converting their Pvt Ltd companies into LLPs in January 2015, when they set up Real Earth Estates LLP and North India IT Parks LLP. In July 2015, they dissolved the original entities, Real Earth Estates Pvt Ltd and North India IT Parks Pvt Ltd.

As reported by The Indian Express on November 28, 2014, three companies owned and controlled by Vadra made profits up to 600 per cent within three years of investment in real estate in Bikaner.

The three Vadra firms — Sky Light Realty Pvt Ltd, Sky Light Hospitality Pvt Ltd and Blur Breeze Trading Pvt Ltd — sold land in 2012 at three to seven times the price they bought it for in 2009-10.

In January 2010, Sky Light Hospitality Pvt Ltd bought 69.55 hectares in two deals for Rs 72 lakh — at a little over Rs 1 lakh per hectare. In January 2012, it sold the land in two separate deals to Delhi’s Allegeny Finlease Pvt Ltd for Rs 5 crore — at Rs 7.41 lakh per hectare, seven times the price paid two years ago.

In four deals in June 2012, Sky Light Hospitality purchased nearly 70 hectares at an average of Rs 80,000 per hectare — less than what it paid in 2009.

In January 2013, the company sold a plot for Rs 6 lakh to Meetu Agarwal of Bikaner, ostensibly to bring down the company’s holding below the ceiling limit.

Subsequently, the Rajasthan government in January 2015 cancelled the mutation (transfer of land) of 374.44 hectares, after the state land department claimed to have found that the allotments were made in the names of “illegal private persons”.

And the rivers be dammed

In June 2013, massive flash floods killed at least 6,000 people in Uttarakhand. Three years after that catastrophe, governments of the state and at the Centre appear bent on unlearning the lessons.

The Indian Express, 23 June 2016

The Himalayas are young mountains, and naturally restless. In the last century and a half, the middle Himalayan region — now Uttarakhand — has suffered at least 50 major tremors and flash floods. But the biggest disaster since the 1803 Garhwal earthquake was more than just a natural calamity. Worse, the 2013 catastrophe had been long in the making.

In 2009, a series of flash floods and landslides killed more than 70 people in the state. This was a warning — which was repeated in another killer flash flood in 2012. That same year, two centres of excellence — the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, and the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee — submitted conflicting reports on the collective impact of hydropower projects in the Alaknanda and Bhagirathi basins.

While IIT-R merely recommended a string of measures to reduce the dangers of harnessing these rivers so intensively at such altitudes, the WII said 24 out of the 39 proposed dams would cause irreversible harm to the rivers, and should not be allowed. By then, another 31 projects had already been commissioned or were under construction on the rivers concerned.

This called for a difficult policy revision. Soon after it became a state in 2000, Uttarakhand was showcased for its hydel potential, second only to that of Arunachal Pradesh, by the A B Vajpayee government that announced dozens of projects in 2003. By 2006, new dams were coming up in the state. In 2009, Uttarakhand drafted its Vision 2020 statement on the theme of ‘Pahad Ka Pani, Pahad Ki Jawani’.

***

While governments in Delhi and Dehradun remained indifferent to any course correction, calamity struck in June 2013. Although shaken, the state government stood its ground — and reiterated days after the tragedy its goal to make Uttarakhand power surplus by 2016.

However, the Supreme Court took suo motu cognizance of the disaster — and stopped clearance of any more hydel projects until further orders. It also directed the Environment Ministry to set up an Expert Body (EB) to assess the role of “mushrooming of hydropower projects” in escalating the impact of the flash floods.

In April 2014, the EB, led by Ravi Chopra of the research and development non-profit People’s Science Institute, submitted its report, which agreed with the WII on the potentially disastrous impact of the 24 proposed projects.

In its affidavit to the Supreme Court in December 2014, the Environment Ministry accepted the EB’s findings that hydel projects had exacerbated the disaster both directly (by blockage) and indirectly (by ecological damage).

The SC Bench of Justice Deepak Misra, to which the case had been shifted after Justice K S Radhakrishnan retired in May that year, lifted the statewide ban on hydel projects. Only the 24 projects in question were put on hold until the EB report had been analysed and policies finalised.

***

Six aggrieved developers then joined the case with the plea that their proposed hydel projects be allowed to go ahead since they already had clearances from the Environment Ministry. The apex court narrowed the scope of the case and directed the Ministry to set up yet another committee — now to consider these six hydel projects as a cluster.

This four-member committee under Vinod Tare of IIT-Kanpur, in its report submitted in February 2015, acknowledged that the six projects had all necessary clearances — but warned against allowing these proposed dams, which could have a serious impact on the region’s ecology. The Environment Ministry, however, presented before the court only the fact that the six projects had all clearances.

Following a media outrage over the selective reading of the report, the Supreme Court asked the Ministry for the entire report. Unfazed, the Ministry decided, in May 2015, to form yet another committee, under the chairmanship of B P Das, to decide the fate of the six projects. As vice-chairman of the Ministry’s expert appraisal committee, Das had earlier cleared 3 of those 6 projects.

In October 2015, the Ministry told the court that the Das committee had recommended all 6 projects, but it would still consult the other stakeholder ministries — Power and Ganga Rejuvenation — before finalising the policy. Thereafter, it claimed in a January 2016 affidavit that the government had reached a policy decision — based on a 1916 agreement between Madan Mohan Malviya and the colonial government — to allow any hydel project that releases at least 1,000 cusecs (cubic feet per second) of water into the Ganga or its tributaries.

However, Uma Bharti, Minister for Ganga Rejuvenation, wrote to her counterpart in the Environment Ministry, expressing shock that the latter had made a submission to the court even though no policy consensus had been reached. Following media reports, the Supreme Court in April asked both the Power and Ganga Rejuvenation ministries to file their own affidavits.

***

For many, 2013 revived the nightmares of 1991 when a deadly earthquake hit Uttarkashi. The floods laid bare the risks of unbridled growth — and a quake of that magnitude is likely to cause much greater damage today. Yet, the zonal master plan for the Bhagirathi Eco-Sensitive Zone (ESZ) — in which 4,179.59 sq km between Gomukh and Uttarkashi was to be designated as a green zone to fight unplanned growth — was buried even before the wounds of 2013 had healed.

On January 13, 2015, at a meeting chaired by Nripendra Misra, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, the Environment Ministry accepted that an ESZ could not be declared without a proposal from the state government. Uttarakhand had claimed that it had not been consulted while notifying the Bhagirathi ESZ, which restricted most development projects in the area, and impacted livelihoods.

The agenda of that meeting held at the Prime Minister’s Office was “to discuss issues relating to Hydro-Electric projects in Uttarakhand”.

The Power Ministry has already submitted its affidavit in support of the Environment Ministry’s century-old 1,000-cusec formula. If Uma Bharti relents, it may soon be business as usual in Uttarakhand, and work will begin on new dams.

For wilful amnesia, it appears three years is a long time.

Panama Papers: I-T contacts Ajitabh Bachchan’s Bofors lawyer in London

The Indian Express, 16 June 2016

The Income Tax department is learnt to have contacted London-based lawyer Sarosh Zaiwalla in connection with offshore shipping companies that list Amitabh Bachchan as director.

Zaiwalla, who won the Bofors libel case for the Bachchan brothers in 1990, was, as The Indian Express first reported Monday, instrumental in bringing together Amitabh’s brother Ajitabh and late shipping magnate Mehernoosh Khajotia into a partnership that set up a bunch of offshore shipping companies in 1990-91.

READ | Firm Amitabh Bachchan denied link to acquired ship from his brother

Nile Shipping Ltd (Bahamas) was one of these companies from which Tramp Shipping Ltd (Bahamas), one of the companies where Amitabh Bachchan was director, acquired a ship in 1994.

READ | Amitabh Bachchan denied link, records show he joined board meetings via phone

The Income Tax department, it is learnt, wrote to Zaiwalla last month and requested his assistance in the ongoing inquiry into the Panama Papers. Contacted by The Indian Express, Zaiwalla said, in an email: “Yes, the Income Tax authority in India did contact me asking for assistance. My response was that I will consider their request if they approach me in a proper legal manner with a request through High Commission of India in London.”

As reported by The Indian Express, several company documents name Amitabh Bachchan as director in four offshore companies, record his participation in board meetings through teleconference, and acquisition of a ship belonging to company co-owned by Ajitabh Bachchan.

While Amitabh Bachchan denied any link to any of these companies, his brother Ajitabh claimed that Amitabh had nothing to do with his “legitimate shipping business”.

Earlier, in an email interview to The Indian Express, Zaiwalla confirmed that US $15 million of “Bachchans’ family wealth” was invested in an offshore shipping business partnership in 1990-92 and that he and Ajitabh Bachchan were partners.

Panama Papers: Firm Amitabh Bachchan denied link to acquired ship from his brother

The Indian Express, 13 June 2016

Amitabh Bachchan has denied any link with the four offshore companies named in the Panama Papers that list him as director.

Records reviewed by The Indian Express show that soon after Amitabh Bachchan was appointed director, one of the four companies, Tramp Shipping Limited (Bahamas), acquired a ship from another Bahamas company, co-owned by his brother Ajitabh Bachchan, in 1994.

Earlier, the ship, MV Nile Delta, was owned by Nile Shipping Ltd, one of four offshore shipping companies set up during 1990-91 by Ajitabh Bachchan in partnership with late Mehernoosh Khajotia and London-based lawyer Sarosh Zaiwalla.

READ | Amitabh Bachchan denied link, records show he joined board meetings via phone

While Amitabh Bachchan did not respond to queries about the acquisition, Ajitabh Bachchan in an email said: “I have been an NRI since 1986 for about 20 years. I was involved in a perfectly legitimate shipping business in the early ‘90s. My brother Amitabh Bachchan had nothing to do with my shipping business.”

READ | Two years before ABCL: 4 shipping firms in tax havens, one link — Amitabh Bachchan

While Ajitabh Bachchan is said to have invested US $15 million as seed capital and Khajotia looked after the business, lawyer Zaiwalla was instrumental in bringing the partners together.

In an email interview, Zaiwalla confirmed the partnership in which he said he had 20 per cent stake while Ajitabh Bachchan and Khajotia held 40 per cent each.

“I was informed by Ajitabh that the source of the US $15 million was Bachchans’ own family wealth. I had assumed that both the brothers invested the money but I had not at that time specifically asked Ajitabh if what were said to be Bachchan family funds belonged to both Amitabh and Ajitabh’s families or they simply belonged to Ajitabh’s family,” said Zaiwalla.

Asked about his association with Ajitabh Bachchan, Zaiwalla said: “My (law) firm was instructed by Ajitabh Bachchan to commence libel proceedings against the Swedish Newspaper Dagens Nyheter… the libel actions related to allegations concerning the Bofors gun deal.”

Zaiwalla added that he was answering the queries from The Indian Express “for Indian Public good. only after being satisfied that legal professional privilege would not apply” as neither him nor his firm acted as lawyers for Delta.

Taronesh Khajotia, son of the late Mehernoosh Khajotia, did not respond to multiple emails, phone calls and messages.

With US $15 million invested by the Bachchan family and subsequent bank loans, the partners bought three ships in 1991. These were MV Lokris (later named Avon Delta and held by Avon Shipping Ltd); MV Nile Delta (held by Nile Shipping Ltd), and MV Ganges Delta (held by Ganges Shipping Ltd).

These three Bahamas companies were owned by another Bahamas company, Delta Shipping Company Ltd, which, in turn, was owned by two holding companies: Maxwell Holdings Ltd and Mattz Holdings.

According to Zaiwalla, Ajitabh Bachchan asked him to retire from the partnership some months after the third ship, MV Ganges Delta, was purchased in 1991.

In 1993, according to Mossack Fonseca records, four shipping companies were set up in the Bahamas and British Virgin Islands where Amitabh Bachchan served as director. One of these companies, Tramp Shipping, acquired MV Nile Delta in 1994 and renamed it MV Sea Delta.

Nile Shipping was dissolved soon after Tramp acquired the ship.

All shares issued by Tramp Shipping were held by Sea Bulk Shipping Company (BVI), another company where Amitabh Bachchan served as director.

In December 1994, Khajotia’s firm Constellation Ship Management (Bahamas) took a loan of USD 1.75 million from Dallah Albaraka Investment Company (DAICO) to buy all shares of Tramp from Sea Bulk.

For the loan, Constellation mortgaged Tramp Shipping’s property MV Sea Tramp. As reported by The Indian Express on April 21, Amitabh Bachchan, as per records, attended the board meetings of Tramp and Sea Bulk to authorise this 1994 deal.

On April 20, Amitabh Bachchan’s publicist issued a statement. It said: “On the Panama disclosures, I wish to state that queries continue to be sent to me by the media. I would humbly request them to kindly direct these to the GOI (Government of India) where I, as a law abiding citizen have already sent, and shall continue to send, my responses. I stand by my earlier statement on the ‘misuse of my name’ in the matter and in any event the press reports do not disclose any illegal act committed by me.”

The Panama Papers refer to the more than 11 million documents leaked from the secret files of Mossack Fonseca, a law firm headquartered in tax haven Panama, known for its factory-like production of offshore companies in tax havens around the world, for its worldwide clientele of the well-heeled.