Death is the reward he got

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For Mubarak (name changed) the last nine years have been thankless. All he has gained from tipping off the Customs and Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) about a consignment of silk yarn imported without payment of duty is Rs 40,000 and not the Rs 60 lakh he believes he is entitled to as reward under the law which says the informer must receive 20 per cent of the duty evaded. In the years since, his associate , Sambaji (name changed) who helped dig up the tax evasion, has been found dead in mysterious circumstances and his widow forced to sell idlis on a roadside in Bengaluru to make a living.

The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence, which confiscated 98652 kgs of goods worth Rs 8.95 crore and demanded payment of Rs 3.5 crore in duty evaded from the firm, Amisha International in 2003, on information provided by its former employee, Mubarak, contended it could not give him a bigger reward as the company had challenged its claim before various courts.

Mubarak says after the case was prosecuted, none of the officials from the DRI, Enforcement Directorate or Customs have bothered to even receive his calls. “I did not tip them off to make money but to clear my name. In 2003 I was caught by ED officials for no fault of mine, while I was handing over some cash to a customer on the instructions of the owner of Amisha International," he recalls. While Mubarak did not face punishment, he chose to leave the firm and investigate its affairs. “When I looked closely into its transactions, I realised the company was illegally shipping in silk from China,” he claims.

He then persuaded another employee of the company, Sambaji who worked in the packing section, to give him precise details about the number of the consignments and then tipped off DRI officials, who intercepted a consignment in Cochin and later raided the office and godown of the firm.

But following the raids Amisha International blamed Sambaji for the tax evasion and he was sent to prison for a year in 2007. After he got out he found employment with a loading company , but in March 2009 he was found dead in unexplained circumstances with an injury on his temple. Mubarak himself had meanwhile left town , fearing for his life.

Five months after the death of Sambaji, a senior DRI officer, G Srinivasa Rao, wrote to the Bengaluru DRI head saying the agency was obliged to take care of the informer, Mubarak's interests. “I happened to be the Deputy Director ,DRI who recorded the information in January 2003. The informer has been very dissatisfied that no earnest efforts were made to recover the amounts pending from the fraudster who is carrying out his business as usual whereas the informer lost his livelihood and his cohort in generating the information was killed immediately after the initiation of prosecution,’’ the officer wrote. But years later, Mubarak is still waiting for justice to come his way.

A friend in times of need
“I didn’t know at the time that my husband had passed on information to the authorities regarding the firm he was working in. The owners blamed him for the tax evasion and as their threats increased we fled to Chennai. We came back after six months and my husband began working in a loading company as an accountant. One day, in March 2009 after he had left for work two men came and said he had been found dead in front of the office. The office was still locked and there was an injury on his temple. Someone said he had just collapsed and died,” recounts Satyadevi, widow of Sambaji, who helped DRI officials gain information about the firm, Amisha International's alleged evasion of duty on its silk imports. Sambaji had been persuaded by a former employee of the firm, Mubarak, to dig into its affairs, but his widow has not received no reward for the efforts he took.

Living alone in a room in a dingy road in the city, she says, " We had no money even to cremate him. Mubarak, who I had seen with my husband some years ago, came and sympathised. He often comes home and gives me some money. I don’t even know how much I am supposed to get from the authorities for the information my husband gave them.’’

Mubarak, who left town soon after the storm broke out, reveals he comes to Bengaluru only to ensure that Sambaji’s wife gets three square meals a day. “I feel responsible for her predicament. She has three daughters. By God’s grace they are all married. Her eldest daughter died some time ago and although her younger daughter lives in Bengaluru, she prefers to live alone,’’ he adds.