TIA NEWS /
The CBI today filed a charge sheet in the Antrix-Devas deal case naming ex-ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair and other senior officials.
They have been accused of facilitating wrongful gain of Rs 578 crore to private multi-media company Devas, by Antrix – the commercial arm of ISRO. Besides Nair, former Managing Director of Forge Advisors and CEO of Devas, Ramachandra Vishwanathan; and the then Director of Devas, M G Chandrasekhar, have also been named in the charge sheet.
The deal between Antrix and Devas was fixed in principle in January 2005 . However, the then Executive Director of Antrix signed it six months later; only after a US company represented by Chandrashekhar and Vishwanathan became majority stakeholders in Devas. The deal was thus in violation of Shankara Committee recommendations; which said execution of any such agreement should be entered into with an Indian company alone.
The charge sheet comes a month after India lost its arbitration case in an international tribunal over Antrix scrapping a deal with Devas.India is liable to pay compensation which could run into millions of dollars.