Shimla-based Stratign is pushing the Turkish made Bayraktar TB2 drones being used by Ukrainians against Russian forces.
New Delhi: A Shimla-based defence technology company that was blacklisted by the Union government on 4 July 2005 from interacting with any government department for forging government certificate for importing sensitive surveillance technology when the telecom ministry was headed by former minister Sukhram (1993-1996) is back in business and is now operating from Dubai with a new name and reaching out to different Indian agencies and defence departments to supply high-end surveillance equipment and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) which are being procured from Turkey, but being marketed and branded as its own products.
The said company, Stratign, operates from one of the suites at the Oberoi Tower Business Bay, Dubai, and is another front of the Shimla-based Shoghi Communications Limited that was, till the early 2000s, the largest supplier of surveillance and counter surveillance equipment to multiple government agencies, including the Military Intelligence and Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW).
One of the products that is being pushed by the said company is the Turkish made Bayraktar TB2 drone. The Bayraktar TB2 drones have gained world-wide attention due to their recent success in the Ukraine-Russia war in which the Ukrainian forces have used these machines to inflict significant damage to the Russians, surprising experts, including the Russians. The drones had also played a decisive role in the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in 2020 in which the Azerbaijan forces, supported by these Turkish drones, defeated the Armenians.
These drones, with a wingspan of 12 meters, is equipped to carry four laser-guided bombs and come with an estimated price tag of $1 million. They have a range of 150 km and can hang around in the air for over 24 hours. It can fly at an altitude of 24,000 feet and can carry a payload of 50 kg.
The Turkish forces have used these drones against the Kurdish insurgent groups by deploying them to either spot their movement and keep them under surveillance or use these drones to drop bombs on them and their hideouts. These drones have proved to be useful in low intensity conflict and hence, according to some Indian officials, will be of great use for the Indian forces in Kashmir and the North-East.
As per reports, the maker of these drones, Baykar Defense, had signed export contracts with 19 countries for the Bayraktar TB2, including Pakistan and Azerbaijan, Libya, Morocco and Ethiopia.
The Baykar defense company belongs to the family of Selcuk Bayraktar, who is the son-in-law of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The 43-year-old Bayraktar is Baykar’s chief technical officer. He has an Electrical engineering Master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and was a doctoral student at MIT which he quit midway in 2007 to return to Turkey where he started working on indigenous drones after his entry won a competition by the Turkish military for an unmanned mini drone. His Master’s thesis at MIT was on an unmanned helicopter.
His company, Bayraktar, was started by his father in 1984 to produce automobile components; it shifted to unmanned aerial vehicles in the late 1990s. In 2015, Bayrakatar married the youngest daughter of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The business head of Stratign is Radhakrishan Shibu, an expert in communications, who worked in the Indian army for almost 22 years before leaving it in October 2013 from the post of Lieutenant Colonel and joining Tata (Strategic Engineering Division SED) and then moving to Stratign in March 2019.
The Bindal family, which controls Stratign and its related companies, had shifted their base to Dubai in 2005 after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in May 2005 shared confidential advisory to intelligence and investigating agencies against three companies (all related to each other)—Shoghi Communications, Secure Telecom and Sidhi Tech Services—not to deal with them due to their indulging in forgery and cheating.
The said chain of events which led to the subsequent black listing of the company started on 26 April 1996 when a squadron commander of the National Security Guard (NSG) received a letter from the Indian Embassy in Belgium to reissue the end user certificate for the import of encryption equipment from Siemens company, Germany. The equipment was only sold to law enforcement agencies of a country and the NSG commander was taken aback as he was asked to re-issue an end user certificate for interception equipment which he never issued in the first place.
This led to an internal probe in multiple ministries as it meant that a private entity was trying to bring more sensitive equipment (something which was already brought earlier on the basis of the forged certificate that was issued in December 1995) using an authority letter from the government of India. The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) handed over the investigation to the CBI on 29 May 1996. The agency filed an FIR in the case on 13 October 1996.
It later emerged that an individual named Gupta who was the Director of Secure Telecom, was the man behind the attempts to import the two encryption equipment. In its findings that it filed in September 1998, the CBI found that the individual’s clientele included government agencies like Narcotics Control Bureau, Intelligence Bureau, R&AW, MI, Enforcement Directorate, NSG etc.
However, in January this year, Gupta was acquitted by a Delhi court which severally castigated the CBI for a shoddy probe in the matter and stated: “Copy of this judgement be sent to the Director, CBI for appropriate action as per rules if he in his wisdom consider necessary, not only against the erring Investigating officer but also against the then forwarding officer who forwarded the charge-sheet, if both or any of them is still in service; and also for taking steps to improve the quality of investigation by CBI’s official if needed by imparting adequate training.”
Sources close to Gupta said that he was an honest businessman and even the CBI could not find anything incriminatory against him. None of these four companies—Stratign, Shoghi Communications, Secure Telecom and Sidhi Tech Services—are on the updated list of the 21 firms that are barred from doing any business with the Ministry of Defence (dated 12 November 2021). In 2005, the Director-General of Military Intelligence was the first office to blacklist the said companies. That was soon after the UPA came to power, unexpectedly defeating the NDA in the 2004 polls. The Sunday Guardian’s email to Stratign requesting their response on the matter did not elicit any response till the time the story went to press.