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Chandigarh: Everlasting investigations by successive governments into numerous alleged corruption cases in material procurement over the past four decades have rarely, if ever, failed in establishing criminality or securing convictions, but have impeded India’s military modernisation and adversely impacted the operational efficiency of all three services.

Instead, such proceedings have invariably become mired in overlapping jurisdictions and procedural delays, hampered by a weak investigative capacity, a limited understanding of complex technical, military, and contractual issues, and a diffused accountability. Ultimately, they have, in most instances, tended to expose systemic failure rather than establish individual guilt.

Nothing illustrates this more starkly than the AgustaWestland VVIP helicopter case, involving the February 2010 procurement of 12 AW-101 aircraft from Italy’s AgustaWestland for the Indian Air Force (IAF) for Euro 570 million, to undertake VVIP transportation.

Cancelled three years later, in 2013, amid corruption allegations, the helicopter import case – centred on British middleman Christian Michel James, the accused in the matter, who has been in jail since his deportation from Dubai in 2018 – has wound its way across multiple investigative agencies, including the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), as well as special courts, and remains nowhere near closure. 

This investigative and judicial failure was underscored yet again on April 8, when the Delhi high court dismissed James’s petition seeking release on the grounds that his nearly eight-year incarceration since extradition had already exceeded the maximum possible sentence for the charges against him. The court held that his plea “lacked merit” and also declined to examine his challenge to Article 17 of the India–UAE extradition treaty, which permits prosecution for offences beyond those listed at the time of his extradition.

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And, though James had secured bail from the Supreme Court in February 2025 in both the CBI and ED cases, he remains in custody for failing to meet stringent release conditions. Earlier, while granting James bail, the Supreme Court expressed clear disquiet over the Briton having spent over six years in jail without trial, with investigations still incomplete and no credible timeline for conclusion, highlighting the wider problem of prolonged incarceration amid delayed prosecution, even as it admonished the CBI and the ED for the pace of proceedings. “Given the pace at which the case is proceeding, the trial will not be completed even in the next 25 years, going by what your conduct has been,” the court had acerbically observed.

In the same prolonged cycle of delay and unresolved outcomes that has come to define the AW-101 case, the fallout of the deal itself – referred to arbitration after cancellation – also remains unsettled 13 years later, with no clarity on its final disposition. This uncertainty extends to the status of the four AW-101 helicopters delivered to the IAF, which remain mothballed in Delhi, their future still contingent on the unresolved corruption proceedings involving James. 

And in the absence of the AW-101, the IAF has continued to rely primarily on its legacy and interim rotary-wing platforms for VVIP transport. The core of this arrangement is Russian-origin Mi-17 V5’s imported 2011 onwards and adapted in limited numbers for VVIP roles with upgraded interiors, secure communications, and defensive systems. 

For shorter routes, the IAF has occasionally used the indigenous Dhruv helicopter in VIP configurations, though its operational constraints limit broader........

© The Wire