Bank Artha Graha assaulted Indian consul official: Polaris

Venkatachari Jagannathan
26 February 2003

Chennai: It's not just Pakistan's military, police and intelligence agencies which assault Indian diplomats. Apparently, even officials of Bank Artha Graha, Jakarta, a bank closely related to the Indonesian military, dare to assault officials of the Indian consul there.

In a startling disclosure, city-based banking software company Polaris Software Lab has said Gautam De, an official of the Indian mission in Indonesia, was physically assaulted and pushed down the stairs by Anton Hudyana, president-director, Bank Artha Graha, and his underlings.

De had visited the bank's headquarters to check on the safety of Polaris officials who were unlawfully detained there.

A four-member Polaris team lead by its CEO and chairman Arun Jain and vice-presidents Rajeev Malhotra, Rajiv Arora and Chander Singh had gone to Indonesia to sort out a commercial dispute with the bank.

The four were detained at the bank's headquarters for several hours before they were taken to the police station. The Jakarta police, in turn, jailed Jain and Malhotra for nearly a week.

According to Polaris, the Indian embassy had lodged a complaint with the local police. The Chennai company issued its statement on 25 February 2003, six days after the Indonesian bank broke its two-month studied silence on the imbroglio.