The Nagarwala scandal, unreconstructed

On24 May 1971, Ved Prakash Malhotra, then the chief cashier at the Parliament Street, New Delhi, branch of State Bank of India, took out ₹60 lakh from the cash vault to deliver it to a courier on the basis of what he claimed were instructions from the then Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi and her secretary, PN Haksar.

- SHREEKANT SAMBRANI

He believed both of them had talked directly to him. He delivered the money to someone later identified as Rustam Sohrab Nagarwala and went to the Prime Minister's residence to collect the cheque for the money taken out. He could not meet either Haksar or Mrs Gandhi. He then realised he had been duped and registered a complaint with the Parliament Street police station. The police followed the information Malhotra had provided and apprehended Nagarwala later in the day at the Delhi Parsi dharamshala in Daryaganj. By late evening, they recovered all but ₹6,000 of the amount taken out of the bank, and arrested Nagarwala. Three days later, in what has been claimed as a lightning quick trial based on Nagarwala's voluntary but unverified confession, he was convicted and sentenced to four years of imprisonment. Assistant Superintendent DKKashyap, an officer of the Indian Police Service, led the investigation.

Nagarwala then recanted the confession and appealed his conviction.

He remained in Tihar Jail, refusing offers of friends to bail him out. A lawyer connected with the Samajwadi leader Raj Narain (who was to successfully challenge Gandhi's election from Raebareli in 1971), RCMaheshwari, represented Nagarwala, but the two never trusted each other. Kashyap died in a road accident in November 1971. Nagarwala suffered a cardiac infarction in early 1972 and was in and out of Lord Irwin hospital. He died on March 22, 1972, his fiftieth birthday.