WikiLeaks challenges the concept of nation: PN Vasanti

For some time now, there has been discussion on how the internet is impacting the spread of information, but the idea was dramatised this week when WikiLeaks, a Sweden-based website, released over 90,000 classified documents of the US military pertaining to the war in Afghanistan.

These military logs, covering the period between January 2004 and December 2009, reveal details on the deaths of civilians, increased Taliban attacks, and involvement by Pakistan and Iran in the insurgency.

Apart from causing a stir in Washington, the leak has also drawn attention to the role new media can play in providing alternative points of view. At the same time, credibility is still an issue, which is probably why WikiLeaks felt it necessary to partner with three newspapers — The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel — which published reports based on advance access to the documents, before they were put up online. In times to come, however, the citizen’s voice will grow stronger in a globalised media, says PN Vasanti, director, Centre for Media Studies, in an interview with DNA.

Are new technologies and the internet making the idea of secret or classified information irrelevant?

Yes, new technologies and new media will not allow classification of information to happen. Suppose there is a new archaeological find and nobody wants to talk about it, somebody can still click a picture and upload it on Facebook. How can you stop that? Today you can’t even monitor who has what information.

We are in an age where information is being bombarded from all directions. It is now up to us to understand what is important, and what is not. In this age, classified information makes no sense.

Why didn’t WikiLeaks go ahead and publish the documents independently, instead of approaching traditional media houses first?

Studies have shown that the print media is much more credible than even the electronic media. The internet is way behind in credibility. In the US, though the print media is in decline, it still holds credibility, at least when it comes to serious issues like the leak of classified information.

New media does play a critical role. But I understand why (WikiLeaks founder Julian) Assange went for (such an approach) — it is a promotion for WikiLeaks, and also an endorsement. If I see my name in a newspaper, it is an endorsement of my viewpoint.

What gaps are internet-based news websites filling?

The traditional media have been ignoring certain types of issues — especially developmental issues. The greatest thing the web has done is give voice to a lot of people who are not able to find space in mainstream media. People who cannot make it to television screens or write in newspapers are able to document their woes and express themselves

What are the downsides of internet-based media?

They haven’t established their credibility and people know that.

Secondly, the communication on internet media is one-to-one, not one-to-many. In TV, many people are watching the content, although I as a user don’t have so much control over content. The control (a user gets) over content is the biggest advantage, but also the biggest disadvantage of new media — today, if I have a viewpoint, I will tend to go towards websites with similar viewpoints. For example, I used to think the concept of caste will disappear, but the internet has reinforced these concepts and further alienated people. That is one of the biggest drawbacks of new media.

Is it possible to create checks and balances so that the freedom that new media gives is not abused?

There is an attempt to regulate the internet in some countries — China is a good example. The US has tried it to some extent, but they haven’t really succeeded.

When you try to control the internet, it goes beyond journalism. It is the common citizen you are trying to control.

WikiLeaks has been described by some as a ‘stateless news media’…

The concept of the citizen’s voice is emerging very fast in a globalised media. The situations we are now facing in the world — whether it is the environment or terrorism — are global in nature. These issues will become much more pressing in the times to come. With something like WikiLeaks, which is a formless organisation, the whole concept of regulation — and the concept of nation itself — has been challenged.

Satyam And The Art Of Burying A Scandal by R Jagannathan

The country’s most shocking terrorist outrage — 26/11 — has resulted in a conviction in 18 months. The country’s biggest corporate scandal — the Rs 7,000-and-odd crore Satyam fraud — hasn’t even got to the trial stage during the same timespan. And this, when the prime accused, B Ramalinga Raju, started it all with a confession.

What does this say about our political-executive-judicial system? Simple: justice happens only when the politicians will it. 26/11 is on its way to making legal history because the entire political system wanted a verdict. Satyam is not going anywhere because the system is in cahoots with the accused.

In fact, the Satyam scandal is probably well on its way to being buried. All the accused, barring the principal one, are out on bail. As for Ramalinga Raju — the self-confessed fraudster — he is now ready to twist the knife in the systemic wound by not only asking for bail but by preparing the grounds for a complete recant.

Reports from Hyderabad suggest that Raju’s legal team has now shifted gears from a resigned “mea culpa” to a cautiously offensive stand where he no longer may stand by his confession of January 7, 2009. The new line of argument — which makes a mockery of all our investigating agencies and our judicial system — is that the confession was not an admission of guilt, but merely a statement of moral responsibility.

If the courts accept this argument, Raju would have made monkeys out of all of us. Let’s see why. If Raju is only taking moral responsibility, the crime was done by other people under him, who were offered bail a few days ago. If they are the ones who did the dirty on Satyam shareholders, Raju should have squarely accused them of skulduggery and turned approver. If, on the other hand, they were doing all this at the urgings of Raju, both should be nailed. The only plausible conclusion is that they are all guilty and in league with one another to bail themselves out. They have decided to hang together and take their chances with the courts rather than cooperate with the CBI and hang separately.

This is not to say that the courts and investigating agencies are going to let Raju get away all that easily. But the reverse cannot be assumed too, given the sheer tardiness with which the Special Frauds Investigation Office, the CBI and the Andhra Pradesh CID have handled an open-and-shut case so far.

That the political system was, from the outset, determined to thwart justice was apparent from day one. It took the Andhra police two days after the whole world heard about the Raju confession to arrest him. But even this arrest was made to prevent other, more diligent, agencies like Sebi from getting hold of Raju and shaking something damaging out of him.

It is obvious that Sebi, which is the market regulator, would have known what to ask and where to look, since the primary confession of Raju was about fudged accounts and cheating investors. But the Andhra CID was given first crack at him, possibly for the simple reason that it was directly under the thumb of guilty politicians.

Given the sheer amount of government contracts given to Raju’s other company Maytas, it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that Satyam’s fraud and Maytas’ Andhra government linkages had a symbiotic connection. It is also well known in Andhra that chief minister YS Rajashekhara Reddy (YSR, who was later killed in a helicopter crash) lobbied hard with Delhi to ensure that nothing damaging emerged before the 2009 general elections. As the Congress’ most powerful chief minister, YSR got his way. This is the main reason why even though little progress has been made in the case against Raju and the other accused, the government happily sold off Satyam to the Mahindras and Maytas too was packed off to IL&FS. In short, the government moved expeditiously to get the company’s future sorted out since thousands of jobs were involved and India’s IT reputation was at stake. But we have seen little progress in the prosecution of Raju & Co.

In theory, Raju has already spent more than 18 months in jail. But he has managed to get himself into a hospital for large stretches of time, ostensibly for hepatitis C treatment. He has been stonewalling the CBI’s efforts to meet him and record his formal statement on the scandal. The judiciary has not covered itself with glory by allowing this to happen.

The Ajmal Kasab trial went like a breeze because judge ML Tahaliyani gave the defence no chance to sabotage it with delaying tactics. Sadly, the Andhra courts have not shown the same sense of urgency to prosecute the country’s biggest fraudster to date. Though Raju is supposed to be tried by a fast-track court, the road to trial is a slow, dirt-track.

Nothing Black & White About Copying & Pasting

When 12-year-old Gunjan Malik, a class VII student, did a copy-paste job on junk food for a class assignment on lifestyle diseases, she didn’t think much of it. That was until her teacher pulled her up for internet plagiarism — lifting chunks of text off the internet and passing it off as her own. She was asked to redo her assignment.

While Malik is cursing the plagiarism detection software that did her in, for many teachers, programs like Turnitin and Viper have been a godsend when it comes to checking the growing trend of internet plagiarism among students.

Some institutions are now more clearly defining plagiarism in school policy and making the use of anti-plagiarism software mandatory. “While giving an assignment, we give students 20% leverage for any usage of internet content in their work,” says Parvez Ahmad, an accounts teacher at RIMS International School, Juhu. If the software detects more than 20% internet content in any submitted assignment, the work is simply rejected.

Rahul Dutt Awasthy, an independent cyber-forensics security consultant, says that even schools that don’t use anti-plagiarism software can employ simple methods to detect plagiarised content. “Teachers know every student’s capabilities. If they suspect that a project is too good to have been done by a particular student, they can simply lift a paragraph from the submitted work and put it in Google Search under quotes,” advises Awasthy. If the work is indeed plagiarised, Google will throw up the same content as a search result.

Both sides of the story

For students, plagiarism is an offence committed in light of its convenience. “Sometimes, while doing online research for a project, the information matches the project requirement to the T. So, with all the workload, the temptation to simply cut and paste is too hard to resist,” reasons an ICSE student.

Manju Sadrangani, principal, Billabong High International School, Santacruz, explains, “Indian students are not aware of internet plagiarism per se. They just go online and pick up a photograph, clipping, article or speech, and simply add it to their assignments.” But with the growing significance of copyright laws and intellectual property rights in the public sphere, Sadrangani cautions that the need to curtail internet plagiarism is more critical than ever before. “If it’s not arrested early on, it becomes an attitude and a way of life,” she says.

Sudarshan Sridhar, who is now 23, still remembers the time he made it to the debate team in his suburban Mumbai school because of a class assignment he submitted on the birth of modern democracy. Having the gift of the gab, Sridhar sailed through the debate season without anyone finding out that the paper he’d submitted was actually lifted off the internet, verbatim. “These days, it’s not about how much you know but how you put across what you do,” he explains, adding that with the internet, everybody today indulges in some degree of plagiarism.

In the West, the seriousness with which an educational institution treats cases of plagiarism among students points to its own credibility. But in India, students are often let off with a stern warning. So if plagiarism is rampant in Indian classrooms, it’s not just the students who are to blame, says educationist Kavita Anand, executive director, Shishuvan, adding, “Internet plagiarism is simply a manifestation of rote learning in more ways than one.”

Entrenched in an education system designed to produce an assembly line of rote learners year after year, and from which they’ve themselves emerged, teachers are clueless about how to better engage their students. “Very few teachers know how to ask questions that require a fair degree of mind application,” says Anand.

One way to do this, says Avnita Bir, principal of RN Podar School, is to make projects opinion-based, where students are required to give their interpretation and substantiate it. “For instance, if it is a social studies project on the second world war, there will be a gamut of information and pictures available. What students can be asked to do is to give their understanding of the cause of the war. Or, if it’s an English studies project, they can be asked to put themselves in a particular setting and say how they would react.”

More than policing students, therefore, teachers can spend their time more usefully by coming up with projects that do not prompt plagiarism, says Bir. “It is the school teachers who need to be innovative. But some teachers either don’t have a creative bent of mind or they do not have the time or inclination for it.”

Plagiarism or progress?

Like many, educationist Nitya Ramaswami too believes that internet research cannot substitute for the knowledge one gains from reading and researching through books. Yet she also concedes that “we can’t have children of the 21st century in 19th century classrooms.”

Tannu Kevalramani, a parent, agrees that is better to use all the available resources. “While using the net articles, they will read them at least once. Even if they are doing a cursory read, they are learning something,” she argues, adding that reading ten books to write an assignment is just not practical, given the workload.

According to Ramaswami, the focus should be on training children to be “digital learners.” But, she adds, “For that we need good teachers and librarians who can highlight the importance of originality and offer students guidelines on how to use the internet with honesty and integrity.”

For example, in Billabong High International School, students are introduced to the topic of plagiarism from Std V onwards. This means that the students are trained early on to give photo credits, put in the name of the journalist or the publication for an article, and give proper credit to the author for any quotes used. Akshit Agarwal, 16, a Std XI student of Dhirubhai Ambani School, says that he is allowed to use as much information as he wants from the internet. But there are only two ways of accommodating that information in his final project. “I either have to understand the content and write it in my own words, or I have to credit the due source followed by my own understanding of the stated matter.”

Anand suggests that holding follow-up sessions on a submitted project is a good way to check if a student has actually understood his own work. Also, giving students elaborate case studies, asking them to put theoretical concepts to practical usage, is also a good check. “So, if it’s a law project, give the students a particular situation, and ask them how it can be addressed using a particular article of law, as opposed to asking them to simply enlist the articles,” she explains.

While all these moves point to a positive trend in schools taking internet plagiarism more seriously, considering its existence in a vacuum might be shortsighted. A junior college economics teacher in a prominent city college feels stemming plagiarism by introducing new teaching methods is unreasonable in a classroom with divided interests and where the teacher must keep track of things like student attendance. “When you get caught up in bureaucratic paperwork for an over 100+ strong class, and you know the student is never going to pick up an economics textbook after he passes the standard XII, you might be tempted to let things slide,” she offers equivocally, adding that she herself has never done it, so far.

Afghan Women Fear Loss of Modest Gains

Women’s precarious rights in Afghanistan have begun seeping away. Girls’ schools are closing; working women are threatened; advocates are attacked; and terrified families are increasingly confining their daughters to home.

For women, instability, as much as the Taliban themselves, is the enemy. Women are casualties of the fighting, not only in the already conservative and embattled Pashtun south and east, but also in districts in the north and center of the country where other armed groups have sprung up.

As Afghan and Western governments explore reconciliation with the Taliban, women fear that the peace they long for may come at the price of rights that have improved since the Taliban government was overthrown in 2001.

“Women do not want war, but none of them want the Taliban of 1996 again; no one wants to be imprisoned in the yards of their houses,” said Rahima Zarifi, the Women’s Ministry representative from the northern Baghlan Province.

Interviews around the country with at least two dozen female members of Parliament, government officials, activists, teachers and young girls suggest a nuanced reality — fighting constricts women’s freedoms nearly as much as a Taliban government, and conservative traditions already limit women’s rights in many places.

Women, however, express a range of fears about a Taliban return, from political to domestic — that they will be shut out of negotiations about any deals with the insurgents and that the Taliban’s return would drive up bride prices, making it more profitable for a family to force girls into marriage earlier.

For many women, the prospect of a resurgence of the Taliban or other conservative groups is stark. “It will ruin our life,” said Shougoufa, 40, as she sorted through sequins and gold sparkles at the bazaar in the city of Pul-i-Khumri in Afghanistan’s north.

“I am a tailor and I need to come to the bazaar to buy these things,” she said. “But if the Taliban come, I will not be able to come. Already we are hearing some girls cannot go to their work anymore.”

In teachers’ tea-break rooms, beauty shop training sessions, bazaars and the privacy of their homes, young women worry that their parents will marry them off early, so they will not be forced to marry Taliban.

In the Pashtun-dominated district of Taghob, east of Kabul, girls’ schools have been closed and any teaching is done at home, the provincial education director said.

That does not trouble some local officials.

“Look, our main priority is to feed our people, to provide rest and to protect their lives,” said Haji Farid, a local member of Parliament. “Why are people focusing on education and sending girls to school? Boys walk three, four, five kilometers to their school. How can a girl walk two, three, four kilometers? During a war you cannot send a girl beyond her door. No one can guarantee her honor. So it is hard to send your daughter to school.”

In Kandahar, Helmand and Zabul, all unstable southern provinces, there are girls’ schools open in the provincial capitals, but in outlying districts there are few, if any. In Zabul Province, there are just six schools for girls, four in the capital and two outside, but few families send their girls to school because of the fighting, said Muhammad Alam, the acting head of the provincial education department.

In Baghlan Province, in northern Afghanistan, the situation for women has steadily worsened over the past year. Ms. Zarifi, the Women’s Ministry representative, has endured assassination attempts and demonstrations against her work. Three months ago, a female member of the provincial council was paralyzed in an attack, and a woman was stabbed to death in the daytime in the middle of the provincial capital earlier in July.

By contrast, most of Kapisa Province, which lies northeast of Kabul, is peaceful. There is a mediation program in the capital to help women and girls when they face domestic violence. In the predominantly ethnically Tajik north there are large, lively schools for girls, where families even allow those who are married to complete high school.

Women’s advocates are concerned that they are increasingly being shut out of political decisions. At an international conference in Kabul on July 20, which was meant to showcase the country’s plans for the future, President Hamid Karzai said nothing about how women’s rights might be protected in negotiations.

The very first meeting on negotiations, held by Mr. Karzai on July 22 with former leaders who had fought the Taliban, did not include a single woman, despite government pledges. When asked, government officials said that women would be included in later sessions.

Although Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has also pledged that she will not desert Afghan women and that any deal with the Taliban that traded peace for women’s rights was “a red line,” women remain wary.

“Right now it’s a big challenge for women to go to school and work, but at least according to our Constitution and laws they have the right to do so,” said Nargis Nehan, 31, an Afghan women’s advocate.

“If the Taliban come back, by law women will be restricted and not allowed to leave their homes,” she said, adding, “Maybe not everywhere, but in those districts where they are in power.”

There is also the real possibility that a deal with the Taliban could stoke the anger of non-Pashtuns who once fought and still fear them, raising the prospect of renewed fighting.

Afghanistan’s women have long led exceptionally constrained lives. The combination of a male-dominated tribal culture in which women have been often treated as little more than chattel, combined with a conservative practice of Islam and a nationwide lack of education, meant that long before the Taliban arrived in the mid-1990s, women had few opportunities beyond the home.

The mujahedeen leaders who forced out the Soviets in the late 1980s were as conservative as the Taliban in many places, keeping women at home in order to preserve family honor instead of educating them or integrating them into the government.

“Families want to send their daughters to school, but it is hard for them to decide to do so because of the fighting and insecurity,” said Mr. Alam, the head of provincial education in Zabul Province.

The families of women who work in offices are threatened, said Rahima Jana, who heads the province’s Department of Women’s Affairs. And the group Human Rights Watch documented instances of night letters meant to scare women into staying at home.

“Security is a big challenge, and we cannot work when there is bad security,” Ms. Jana said. “Last year was much better than this year.”

In Mahmud-e Raqi, 12 teenage girls sat around a small trunk filled with beauticians’ tools — combs, boxes of hair dye, scissors, nail polish, hair spray — and watched closely as the instructor sat one of the girls in a desk chair and demonstrated how to cut off split ends evenly.

In most places in the world this scene would hardly be a sign of women’s liberation, but in this corner of Afghanistan, it meant a great deal. The girls, ages 15 to 17, had been allowed to come from their villages to the provincial capital; they will take home a trunk of beauty goods and can earn their own money in their homes by offering beauty services to women in their village.

This chance at determining a little of their future is what they fear will be threatened if the Taliban return through a negotiated peace settlement.

“They will beat us and forbid us from this freedom, the freedom to come here, to this class; they will stop us from doing things,” said Biboli, 16, a girl with long brown hair barely covered by a thin white veil.

The greatest fear is that no one is really listening, said Habiba Shamim, one of the instructors.

“Please,” she pleaded. “Carry our words to people.”

Govt moves to make medical malpractices an offence

In view of increasing instances of violation of medical ethics, and malpractice by doctors, the government is in the process of making specific provisions in the law to make all such acts, a punishable offence under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

The health ministry has proposed amendments in the Drugs and Cosmetics Act to plug the loopholes in present laws that let doctors escape. A separate chapter on medical ethics is being added in the Act — violation will be punishable under IPC leading to imprisonment.

With the amendments in place, prescribing unnecessary medicines, taking presents from pharmaceutical companies, accepting their hospitality and conducting clinical trials without following the prescribed norms, will be considered an offence.

The move is based on the recommendations of the new Board of Governors of Medical Council of India (MCI) which wants tighter norms for violation of medical ethics. “There are going to be strictures against malpractices. These will be against doctors taking presents, prescribing too many drugs and being share holders of companies conducting medical trials,” said Dr Ranjit Roy Choudhary, member Board of Governors of MCI.

Health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad justified the move sayingthat many doctors were prescribing unnecessary medicines to the patients or prescribing expensive drugs of certain companies even though cheaper and generic versions of such drugs were available.

“At present there are no harsh punishments for doctors found indulging in unethical practices. The maximum punishment they get is cancellation of license or suspension of clinical trials they are conducting in violation of norms. There has to be some accountability and punishment for doctors who put life of patients at risk. At present there is no punishment under the IPC. The amendments would ensure that the doctors can be sent to jail for playing with patients’ life and violating ethical norms,” said Azad.

So far, death due to negligence is the only act covered under IPC section 304A. But this law does not punish other acts of doctors which includes causing injury, over-medication, providing poor quality of medical care or refusing treatment.

In 1995, though Supreme Court brought the medical profession within the ambit of a ‘service’ as defined in the Consumer Protection Act, 1986 (5) allowing patients who had sustained injuries in the course of treatment to sue doctors for compensation; its order did not cover patients who were provided service free of cost or if they had paid only a nominal fee.

Seniors Give Marriage A Second Chance

“Grow old with me. The best is yet to be.

Face the setting sun, when the day is done...” John Lennon.

Senior citizens are coming out of their loneliness by giving life — and married life — a second chance.

An Ahmedabad-based organisation, Vinamulya Mulya Sewa, is giving them an opportunity to do so by organising ‘swayamvar’ for the never married, divorcees, widows and widowers under the banner ‘Second Innings’. Targeted at mature adults, this initiative is for those above 50 years of age.

“Getting married again, after divorce or death of a spouse, is not easy, but it is gaining popularity,” said Nathubai Patel, founder of Vinamulya Mulya Sewa.

Divisions of caste are no barrier here and the organisation encourages inter-caste marriages. “In old age, people yearn for companionship. Caste plays no role. We want to bring a stop to all caste based divides,” said Patel.

Till date, this ‘marriage bureau’ boasts of uniting 30 such people in their twilight years. Patel has received 1,200 applications from all over India. 300 applicants are from parts of Maharashtra and Mumbai alone. The marriage bureau offers its services gratis and says that, for now, there are more old men applying, than women.

“There’s a still a lot of stigma attached to women remarrying in their old age. They fear their children or in-laws might object to the alliance,” said Patel.

The Bhagades, a Maharashtrian couple, rediscovered wedding bliss two years ago, thanks to Patel’s matrimonial service.“I had no son and was lonely. So I met Sushila, who was also a widow and her daughters didn’t object,” said Srivastav Bhagade, 65. For Madhuben Trivedi, there was no support despite having four children. “My children didn’t want to keep me. They have now reconciled to the fact that I have re-married and even come to visit me,” said Madhuben Trivedi, 74.

Dignity Foundation, that organises a Chai Masti Corner, has observed a similar practice. Besides keeping elderly people occupied, it has been a rendezvous point for many old couples, who have also remarried.

64-year-old Vipin Bhiwandkar, found his soulmate Chaaya, 63, at the Chai Masti Corner. “When I became a member of Chai Masti Corner in 2005, I was alone as my wife expired in 2004. One of my daughters was against my marrying Chhaya, reasoning that she would support me. I made her understand that I needed a companion in my old age,” said Bhiwandkar.

Couple’s Vision for Municipal Schools

An Experiment Which Introduces IB Curriculum To Municipal Schools

In a successful experiment in Ahmedabad, Pascal Chazot, a French Parliamentarian and his wife, Anju Musafir (Indian) adopted a municipal school, turning it into a leading institution with an international curriculum on offer. The couple now wants to replicate this success in other Indian cities, including Mumbai.

“It was a joint venture with the municipal corporation there. We introduced the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum in the school. Four batches (around 120 students) have passed out and have gone ahead to study in universities within the country and abroad,” said Musafir. “We did face severe opposition as people were averse to the idea of a municipal school teaching in English and that too an international curriculum,” she added.

Although they had to face red-tapism and opposition, Chazot is now ready to take their experiment across the country. “Several children study in municipal schools in Mumbai too. Now that we have tested our project in a particular part of the country, we are confident we can take it to other places,” said Chazot.

However, Musafir said the infrastructure alone is not enough, and what is more important is the mindset of the school authorities and parents. “Every municipal school in the city has the potential to be an international school. We are also open to collaboration with like-minded groups or individuals who want to enhance the quality of municipal schools in Mumbai.” she said.

Chazot and Musafir are now planning to meet human resource & development minister, Kapil Sibal to see how this model can be taken to other parts of the country.

At their current school, an alternative model of education is offered from KG to Std XII, where the focus is largely on innovative projects and application of studies to real-life. The aim is that students can concentrate on “how to learn” and not “what to learn”.

“Even if we offer an Indian curriculum in a municipal school, we need to see that it’s of high quality. Even those from a privileged class should want to study there. That’s our vision,” she added.

Now an Aussie firm in Commonwealth Games sleaze

After the UK firm, AM Films Ltd, which is caught in a corruption scandal over irregular financial transactions with the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee here, it is now the turn of an Australian firm to come under the scanner.

According to sources, the Australian firm which had bagged the contracts for the opening and closing ceremonies had inserted certain additional works into the contract, after the deal had been finalised.

A complaint in this regard has been received by the Finance ministry. “We have forwarded the matter for further investigation to the Enforcement Directorate,” a senior finance ministry official confirmed. The contracts and the alleged unlawful insertions amount to several crores.

Though it appears unlikely that the government will proceed with the investigations now, with barely anytime left for the Games, certain senior functionaries of the Organising Committee (OC) are also reportedly under scrutiny. Sources said that the e-mail accounts of some OC functionaries and their family members are likely to be scrutinized.

Sources said there are several complaints of alleged corruption involving the OC and some foreign firms that have bagged contracts.

The UK-based AM Films has, meanwhile, admitted that it did not have a contract with the Organising Committee of the Games, but denied allegations of irregular financial transactions with them. The company’s proprietor, Ashish Patel, reportedly said that the money was transferred by the Organising Committee in lieu of services obtained during the Queen’s Baton Relay function held in London last October.

The alleged scandal came to light when the OC asked for a VAT refund of £14,000 in March for payments made to the British company. Allegations of substantial amounts being transferred on a regular basis to AM Films also emerged when the British government raised doubts about the deal yesterday.