Even after a 20-year effort, the special court is discussing the possibility of pushing the hearings. The only major beneficiaries have been India's lawyers, whose incomes rose by a factor of 10 or more

Sucheta Dalal

In a letter to The Economic Times, Harshad Mehta’s widow, Jyoti Mehta, made some interesting, although emotionally-coloured, points. One was that, after all the hullabaloo, her late husband was convicted only in one criminal case. However, she ignores that his name was automatically dropped from other cases after his death. She also says that there was no law then that required him to keep clients’ money in a separate account. It is a bizarre claim, since the clients in this case were State Bank of India, ANZ Grindlays and National Housing Bank (NHB), whose cheques were deposited in Harshad’s account. Interestingly, ANZ Grindlays had also claimed in 1992 that crediting bankers’ cheques to brokers’ accounts was ‘an accepted market practice’, but the government ensured that this preposterous claim was never argued in court, by quietly pushing its dispute with NHB into arbitration. Next, she says, the custodian has coercively impounded the entire family’s assets. But the fact is that the wealth and lifestyle they still enjoy was entirely due to Harshad Mehta’s questionable methods.

However, Jyoti Mehta does make one valid point. She says that ‘all hell broke loose’ after the scam and, instead of minimising the damage, the system seemed determined to maximise it. The scam trial, despite a special statute to investigate it, was disorganised. Nobody worked to a goal of sorting out the tangled money trail or to punish the guilty. We have to agree with her when she says, “In any other country, even if my husband was found guilty, by now, he would have been leading a normal life.” In India, after a 20-year effort, which seems set to go on for another decade or more, the special court is discussing the possibility of pushing the hearings—now reduced to just one day a week—to the regular sessions court. The only major beneficiaries of the scam of 1992, and all the later ones, have been India’s lawyers, whose incomes rose by a factor of 10 or more.