The Chhattisgarh Files: How senior lawyer, paid Rs 80 L to represent Baghel govt in NAN scam, was taking orders from accused whom ACB was to investigate

In 2015, when the BJP was in power in Chhattisgarh and Dr Raman Singh was the Chief Minister, Congress had alleged that the government was distributing sub-standard quality grains under the PDS and that officials had received kickbacks from rice millers to allow this. The Nagrik Apurti Nigam is the nodal agency in Chhattisgarh responsible for procuring and distributing food grains under PDS. The BJP government had launched a probe into what came to be known as the NAN scam and subsequently, 27 people were booked by the BJP govt – Anil Tuteja and Alok Shukla being the prime accused. ACB later started a money laundering probe as well and a chargesheet was filed in 2015. After this, Congress came to power in Chhattisgarh.

What transpired in Chhattisgarh after the Bhupesh Baghel government took reign was corruption with impunity, a coordinated campaign to save the primary accused, Anil Tuteja, in the NAN scam and an attempt to use IPS officers, the Judiciary and other means at the government’s disposal to Ex-Chief Minister, Raman Singh and his family members, former Principle Secretary Aman Singh and his wife Yasmeen Singh, Former DG (Police) Mukesh Gupta, Ashok Chaturvedi and Chintamani Chandrakar, using fabricated evidence, coercion of witnesses and other extra-judicial means. After Bhupesh Baghel took the reigns, an SIT was formed to probe the scam because the prime accused, Anil Tuteja, had alleged that the investigation was unfair.

Since then, various pieces of evidence have come to the fore, proving that Bhupesh Baghel was personally shielding the prime accused, Anil Tuteja, and was instead trying to implicate Raman Singh in the scam. In 2020, Tuteja got bail and immediately, he was appointed by the Baghel govt again. Tuteja was the Joint Secretary for Commerce and Industries and Shukla became the Principal Secretary in charge of Education and other departments. 

OpIndia has accessed Whatsapp chats of Anil Tuteja-IAS Officer, presently Joint Secretary Industries and his Son Yash Tuteja, which was retrieved by Income Tax consequent to its raids conducted in Chhattisgarh, wherein his mobile phone was seized in February 2020. These Whatsapp chats now in possession of OpIndia contain the messages exchanged between the Tutejas and senior IPS officers in the State namely, SRP Kalluri, Kalyan Elesela, G.P Singh and Arif Sheikh. The chats clearly demonstrate that the entire criminal justice delivery system in the State is being abused, misused and mutilated at the behest of Anil Tuteja and his son Yash Tuteja. A detailed story about what the chats entailed was published by OpIndia on the 18th of January 2023. The story can be read here.

The Enforcement Directorate in 2020 had filed a Special Leave Application in the Supreme Court of India against the anticipatory bail granted to Anil Tuteja. In the SLP, the ED spoke at length about the WhatsApp conversations that the Income Tax Department had accessed, most of which have been submitted to the court in a sealed envelope and some others have been accessed by OpIndia. The ED told SC that both the main accused, Tuteja and Shukla, in connivance with successive chiefs of EOW-ACB, Chhattisgarh, one senior High Court officer, members of the SIT and with the “intervention of the Chief Minister” has “weakened the offence of corruption against them by procuring favourable reports from the said prosecuting agency and SIT by actively influencing and threatening witnesses of the predicate offences as well as the offences of money laundering.

G.P Singh, the ADG who succeeded SRP Kaluri as head of EOW/ACB, who was also colluding with Tuteja and Shukla at the behest of CM Bhupesh Baghel, approached the Supreme Court of India on the 22nd of December 2022, detailing how he was pressurised by Bhupesh Baghel to implicate Raman Singh, Mukesh Gupta, Aman Singh and several others in the NAN scam, save Anil Tuteja in the scam and also report the investigation details to Tuteja.

GP Singh in his petition says that he was called to meet Bhupesh Baghel twice, once on the 14th of September 2019 and once on the 10th of May 2020. In both these meetings, he was specifically asked to implicate Baghel’s political opponents and was threatened with consequences if he failed. He also mentioned that he was handed a “hit list” by Bhupesh Baghel himself, and that hit list was attached as an annexure to his petition.

While the chats that OpIndia accessed and reported on earlier itself reveal the conspiracy, substantiating the ‘hit list’ that GP Singh had attached in his petition, OpIndia has now perused more evidence of the collusion and subversion of the criminal justice system that was underway in Chhattisgarh. In the chats that OpIndia had accessed, there were several documents that were exchanged between the IPS officers and Anil Tuteja. Those attachments and some other documents that were recovered from Tuteja’s phone further substantiate the ‘hit list’ that GP Singh was handed by Bhupesh Baghel.

How the accused and his son (Anil Tuteja and Yash Tuteja) were writing the Status Report that EOW was supposed to submit to HC against them

In the Whatsapp chat that OpIndia accessed, one chat, in particular, caught our attention. On the 16th of February 2019, Yash Tuteja (Anil Tuteja’s son) sent a message to IPS officer Kalyan Elesela, SP of EOW (the department that was meant to investigate Anil Tuteja in the NAN scam).

In the message, Yash Tuteja was seen sharing the draft of the Status Report (that EOW was to file to the High Court, after investigation Anil Tuteja in the NAN scam) with Kalyan Elesela.

It is imperitive to break down the message sent by Yash Tuteja to understand what was happening at the time. In the message, Yash starts with “As discussed in the conference, please note the following sequence for the status report” and after writing the draft of the Status Report, he signs off using the name of “Dayan Krishnan, Senior Advocate”.

Essentially, there was a conference call where one can assume from the chats that at least the Tutejas, Dayan Krishnan and Kalyan Elesela were present, discussing the status report that EOW was to file to the High Court. Dayan Krishnan is a senior High Court lawyer who was representing the ACB-EOW in the NAN scam on behalf of the Chhattisgarh government (Bhupesh Baghel).

After the conference call, Dayan Krishnan, representing the department meant to investigate Anil Tuteja, shares a draft of the Status Report to be filed in the High Court with Yash Tuteja. We can assume this based on the fact that Yash Tuteja shares an edited draft with Kalyan signed off as Dayan Krishnan. Since we don’t have access to all the chats, at this point, this can only be an educated guess. Yash Tuteja then makes amendments to the draft and sends it to Kalyan – the SP of EOW – as the report to be filed in the High Court. One, therefore, has to ask the question of whether the lawyer representing ACB was first sharing the draft with the prime accused in the NAN scam (not the department), who was, in turn, making amendments and sharing the edited draft with the SP of the EOW, which was meant to be investigating him.

The fact that it was Yash Tuteja’s draft of the Status Report that was being used by the EOW-ACB is further substantiated by the fact that a day later, on the 17th of February 2019, Kalyan Elesela sent an update Status Report draft with Yash Tuteja over Whatsapp chat (the chats accessed by OpIndia).

From the documents that are now in the possession of OpIndia that have been recovered from Anil Tuteja’s phone, the document exchanged here bearing the document number 73ea6827-acf0-4712-9ba0-cc37cd5f757c is the final Status Report draft that Elesela shared with Yash Tuteja, which Yash Tuteja, in turn, shared with Anil Tuteja (since the same document was retrieved with Anil Tuteja’s phone).

Interestingly, one of the documents that were recovered from Anil Tuteja’s phone, some of which OpIndia has access to, is a list of “tasks” that are to be accomplished.

This document was shared with Anil Tuteja on the 21st of February 2019. OpIndia cannot confirm who shared this document with Tuteja since this was recovered from his phone but don’t make an appearance in the WhatsApp chats itself.

From this ‘task’ list in the NAN case itself, it is evident that the hitlist which was given to GP Singh is indeed authentic and there was active collusion to implicate Mukesh Gupta, Aman Singh, Raman Singh and others in the NAN scam. In the ‘tasks to accomplish’, there are certain key tasks that stand out.

1. File chargesheet against Mukesh Gupta
2. Proper reply in Aman Singh’s case was to be drafted – which was listed for hearing on the 27th of February 2019.

This ‘task’ list proves that there was indeed a concerted effort by government officials along with the accused in the NAN scam, Anil Tuteja, to implicate the people mentioned in GP Singh’s ‘hitlist’, which was given to him by Bhupesh Baghel himself, according to his court submission.

If one notices, one of the ‘tasks’ to be accomplished is ‘getting approval from the Law Department to appoint Dayan Krishnan as the lawyer to defend ACB in the court of law. If one recalls, there was a substantial uproar in the parliament about Bhupesh Baghel hiring a private lawyer like Dayan Krishnan to save Anil Tuteja. It was revealed at the time that Krishnan was paid Rs 80 lakhs for his stint. The chats have now demonstrated that Dayan Krishnan was indeed working in collusion with Anil Tuteja while representing the ACB-EOW in the NAN scam case.

In fact, another document that was recovered from the phone of Anil Tuteja was an internal government document that confirmed the hiring of Dayan Krishnan as the ACB lawyer.

There are several important aspects that emerge from these revelations and documents found on Anil Tuteja’s phone by the Income Tax department, that OpIndia has access to and is perusing:

1. The SIT constituted by Bhupesh Baghel under the ACB-EOW was meant to investigate the role of Anil Tuteja and Alok Shukla in the NAN scam. Why was the SP of EOW and other officials of ACB-EOW sharing the developments of the case with the prime accused himself? GP Singh has revealed that he was specifically instructed by Bhupesh Baghel to share the investigation progress with Anil Tuteja.
2. Dayan Krishnan is a senior lawyer engaged by the Bhupesh Baghel government to represent ACB – the department meant to investigate the role of Anil Tuteja in the NAN scam. Was Dayan Krishnan sharing the draft of the Status Report of the investigation, that ACB was supposed to file in the High Court against Anil Tuteja, with Yash Tuteja, Anil Tuteja’s son?
3. After Dayan Krishnan presumably shared the draft with Yash Tuteja, Yash made edits to the Status Report and sent the same to Kalyan Elesela – the SP of EOW, who in turn, presumably shared it with Dayan Krishnan (since the filing was to be done by the lawyer). Was Dayan Krishnan also instructed by Bhupesh Baghel to work in tandem with Anil Tuteja to save him while the SIT weakened the investigation?
4. The government document confirming the engagement of Dayan Krishnan was also recovered from the phone of Anil Tuteja – Was Dayan Krishnan, representing the ACB, actually on the payroll of Anil Tuteja, the prime accused that ACB was meant to be investigating?
5. Why was a “task list” which specifically mentioned the hiring of Dayan Krishnan shared with Anil Tuteja? Was Dayan Krishnan hired because he was willing to do the bidding of Anil Tuteja while representing the ACB?

To further substantiate that Dayan Krishnan, may have been hired to do the bidding of Anil Tuteja, another chat that gains importance is one where Kalyan Elesela was sending a copy of Dayan Krishnan’s air tickets to Yash Tuteja on the 18th of February 2019 – only a day after the final draft of the Status Report was shared (as explained above).

It, therefore, also becomes important to investigate why even the air tickets of the lawyer of ACB, were being sent by the SP of EOW to the prime accused who they were supposed to investigate.

From this part of the investigation by OpIndia, certain conclusions can be drawn with a fair amount of certainty:

1. The hitlist that GP Singh claimed was given to him by Bhupesh Baghel is indeed authentic as several other chats and documents, as explained in this article, prove that the ACB, EOW, their lawyer and IPS officers of the state were colluding with Anil Tuteja to implicate the protagonists mentioned in the hit-list (Mukesh Gupta, Alok Shukla and others).
2. Raman Singh had insinuated that the lawyer of the ACB was hired at the behest of Anil Tuteja since he was willing to do his bidding and save him in the investigation – this could be the case given the revelations in this article.
3. The entire investigation in the NAN scam, which was meant to investigate the role of Anil Tuteja, was being done at the behest of Tuteja himself.
4. The SIT that Bhupesh Baghel formed was done to save Anil Tuteja and weaken the investigation in cohorts with Anil Tuteja after he was charge sheeted as the prime accused under the Raman Singh government in 2018.
5. The High Court was wilfully misled by the Bhupesh Baghel government when a sham Status Report was filed by the ACB which was drafted and edited by the accused himself. The question also is whether Dayan Krishnan was a willful participant in the sham.
6. It is hard to believe that a senior lawyer like Krishnan was unaware of the collusion that was taking place between ACB/EOW and Tuteja. If he was indeed in the know, should he also be held liable for misleading the court.

While the NAN scam is elaborate, what is far more elaborate is the extent to which the Bhupesh Baghel administration seems to have gone to not only save the prime accused but also to implicate Raman Singh and others in the scam. As OpIndia said earlier, the NAN scam is one case that shows the extent of the rot that a system has been made to suffer – with police officers, IAS officers, judges and politicians fabricating evidence, weakening a case of corruption under investigation, coercing witnesses, threatening witnesses, shielding accused, perpetuating hawala transactions and more. As we keep peeling back the layers of this scam and delving more into the chats that OpIndia has accessed, we will continue to pose follow-up questions to CM Bhupesh Baghel in our ‘The Chhattisgarh Files’ series. 

In public interest, we have made public all the Whatsapp chats, attachment files and other files that were recovered from Anil Tuteja’s phone by the Income Tax Department. The portions of the chats that OpIndia has accessed are the parts that have not been submitted to the Supreme Court in a sealed envelope by the ED. The full chats and files can be accessed here – https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1KqlOtQ-1ty2eyghcUlg0FJ8rmkGYBpqm?usp=sharing