Even as the noose tightens around arms dealer Abhishek Verma and his Romanian wife Anca Neacsu, a startling revelation that she had met three key Defence officials, including Minister of State for Defence M M Pallam Raju, has rattled the Defence Ministry.
Neacsu, the newly-wed wife of Verma who landed in the CBI net last month, had met Director-General (Defence Acquisition) Vivek Rae and Secretary (Defence Production) Shekhar Agarwal on December 7 last year.
However, an embarrassed Defence Ministry dismissed any ‘conspiracy theory’ into the meetings.
“There is nothing wrong in the meetings. These three officials are authorised to meet any original equipment manufacturers due to their appointments. She met them as the managing director of a defence firm,” sources said. Neacsu met them as the managing director of Ganton Indian Pvt Ltd to set up a meeting for the owner of the company with these officials, Defence Ministry officials claimed. She along with Abhishek Verma, who has been in the dock for involvement in the Navy war room leak case, were booked by the CBI under the Prevention of Corruption Act.
They were accused of taking $530,000 from Swiss arms company Rheinmetall Air Defence AG (RAD) in lieu of using Verma’s influence to stall the blacklisting proceedings initiated by the government against RAD after it figured in the Ordnance Factor Board scam.
In March this year, the firm was eventually debarred from conducting business in India for 10 years.