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He made himself vulnerable to extortionist vultures from the Customs and from the Police. (Mercifully not from the usual extortionists - the Sales Tax Department, and the Income Tax Department - for the Sales Tax Department soon enough learnt that all his sales were 100% via DDs, and he was regularly paying Sales Tax -Rs 109.34 crores between 1995-6 and Sept 2003 by a proprietary firm; as for the Income Tax, they realized here was R. V. Pandit's son, all Vasant's business transactions were lily-white, striving to be a notable tax payer! (I was a personal tax-payer from the age of 30, never evading a paisa, but nowhere an earner near my son; he paid as personal Income Tax Rs 15.71 crores between 1998-99 and 2002-3, earning a favorable mention by the Finance Minister in the Rajya Sabha for having paid a personal Income Tax of Rs 6.4 crores in March 2001, Rs 6.8 crores in March 2002 and Rs 4.83 crores in March 2003: a virtual bankrupt after that, yet not owing anything significant on account of statutory dues. He gave Rs 30.83 crores, all by cheque, in charities, mostly to well known hospitals, schools/homes for the physically challenged, water preservation projects, in the 9/10 years he was in business - contributing Rs 6.95 crores himself and the rest collecting from his distributors/Independent Representatives [as against some Rs 4 crores only, all by cheque, I have given to charities in a long life]).

But the Customs, and the Police thought differently; they had no way of knowing what the Sales Tax and the Income Tax people routinely learnt about tax compliance by businesses. In the event, they asked for bribes when they saw Vasant's huge revenues, a proprietary firm (proprietary firms with high turnover are often hoarders of tax-avoided wealth), a sure conduit, they thought, for making big black bucks.… We must have a share of the loot, they felt. Vasant was listening to none of that - I do not think he was inclined to bribe; he knew I would publicly disown him if he bribed. I had, in any event, no connection with his business, a proprietary firm.

In this situation, Vasant was even more vulnerable because he is the son of R.V. Pandit - RVP who was repeatedly writing over the previous 40 years, that in many instances a section of the Police in India were the real criminals; and that together with the Income Tax Department, the Sales Tax Department and the Customs Department they were bleeding India, stealing very large amounts of money each year from the public exchequer. So they had scores to settle with me for fighting corruption: the Supreme Court had just then (1996) quoted more than 2 pages of what I had written were the consequences of corruption for the Indian people and the Indian State. In a two-judge-Bench judgment in Common Cause Versus Union of India (Union of India and others, Writ Petition [Civil] No. 24 of 1996 - Kuldip Singh and Faizan Uddin), in which Petition I had intervened, the first time ever that a living lay person was thus quoted in a Supreme Court judgment.