New Delhi: Former governor of India-held Kashmir Satya Pal Malik, who made many revelations about national security and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s approach to corruption in an explosive interview to The Wire last week, has been called in by the country’s apex investigating agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), “for questioning” on April 28.

The Wire said the BJP-appointed governor for four other states will be going to the CBI’s guest house on Akbar Road in New Delhi to answer questions.

Mr Malik had blamed the government for the Pulwama massacre, saying had the government acceded to the request to fly the troopers instead of making them sitting ducks on the road, there would have been no tragedy. The claim has sparked protests from opposition parties, with Nationalist Congress Party chief asking the government to resign. But The Wire said the questioning could be about the corruption issues Mr Malik had raised.

“It is reliably learnt that the ‘questioning’ will be on the Reliance Insurance issue — the scheme that RSS and BJP leader Ram Madhav was allegedly pushing Malik to pass while he was the governor of held Kashmir, and which Malik cancelled,” The Wire said. On April 14, Malik had given an explosive interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, in which he had specifically spoken of this deal.

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leader Ram Madhav, Mr Malik said, paid the then Indian held Jammu and Kashmir governor a special visit to try and get him to pass a scheme proposed by Reliance Insurance. When Mr Malik made it clear that the scheme had been cancelled and the paperwork was done, Mr Madhav left disappointed.

Mr Malik had also mentioned this incident in an interview to Prashant Tandon for DB Live, conducted before Thapar’s interview. After that aired, Mr Madhav sent Mr Malik a defamation notice.

The multi-party petition in the Supreme Court against the role played by central agencies (including the CBI) to play to a political tune was not heard by the apex court as they claimed they could not look at issuing broad blanket rulings, but needed to look at matters case by case.

In the interview, Mr Malik said he didn’t like to meet people before showering but he met Mr Ram Madhav who came early in the morning to see him.

“Ask him to tell me why he had shown up at the residence, what did he want to talk about? Did he want to talk about murder? One day earlier we had closed the matter and he came back again very early in the morning. He asked me if I had closed the matter on insurance and I said that I had. He asked me if the letter had gone and I said that it had. Then Ram Madhav got upset.”

Mr Malik said he had initially passed this scheme but a lot of people asked him to take it back. “The first thing that happened was that government employees were really unhappy with the coming of the scheme. That is because all government employees had to pay Indian Rs8,500 a year for the scheme. Retired officers had to give more than Indian Rs20,000. So I said in Delhi, under Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS), we don’t have to pay anything, so why would they pay here? And on top of that, the hospitals that had been listed in the scheme were bad hospitals. None of the hospitals were of national repute. I realised that the hospitals were bad and then good treatment would not be meted out even after taking large amounts.”

Published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2023