Jaya Jaitly, 2 others convicted

New Delhi, July 25: Former Samata Party president Jaya Jaitly and two others have been convicted by a court here in a nearly 20-year-old graft case related to a purported defence deal that stemmed from a sensational sting operation by Tehelka news portal.

Special CBI judge Virender Bhat held Jaitly, her former party colleague Gopal Pacherwal and Major General S.P. Murgai (Retired) guilty of corruption and criminal conspiracy. The sting, “Operation Westend”, was aired by Tehelka in January 2001 in which the accused purportedly accepted bribe from reporters of the the portal, who posed as representatives of a fictitious company, for supply orders for hand held thermal imagers from the Army.

The meetings took place in the official residence of the then defence minister George Fernandes.

In its July 21 order, the court observed that while Jaitly accepted illegal gratification of Rs 2 lakh from Mathew Samuel, a representative of the fictitious company Westend International, Murgai received `20,000.

The three accused, along with Surender Kumar Surekha who later turned an approver, were a party to the criminal conspiracy, the court held.

All the three accused — Jaitly, Pacherwal and Murgai — were convicted of the offence of conspiracy (Section 120-B IPC) read with Section 9 (Taking gratification, for exercise of personal influence with public servant) of Pre-vention of Corruption Act.

The court is scheduled to hear arguments on quantum of sentence on July 29.

The court held that from the evidence lead by the prosecution it is proved beyond doubt that in the meeting in the hotel room on December 25, 2000 Surekha and Murgai assured their assistance to Samuel in procuring letter of evaluation for the product of his company from the defence ministry and also to arrange a meeting between him and accused Jaya Jaitly who would provide political cover to them in this regard. It was agreed that Samuel would pay a sum of `1 lakh each to Surekha and Murgai and a sum of `2 lakh to accused Jaitly in this regard, the order said. — PTI

◗ THE COURT is scheduled to hear arguments on quantum of sentence on July 29