Jaya Jaitley and 2 others get 4-year jail for corruption
HC puts jail term on hold, seeks CBI reply
A Delhi court on Thursday sentenced former Samata Party president Jaya Jaitley and two others to four years in prison for corruption in a 2000-01 case related to a purported defence deal. Special CBI judge Virender Bhat also imposed a fine of `1 lakh each on all three and directed them to surrender before it till 5 pm on Thursday itself.
The Delhi high court, however, put on hold Ms Jaitley’s four-year jail term. The high court has sought the CBI’s response on Ms Jaitley’s appeal challenging her conviction and sentence in the case.
Ms Jaitley, her former party colleague Gopal Pacherwal and Major General S.P. Murgai (Retd) were held guilty of corruption and criminal conspiracy in the purported purchase of handheld thermal imagers. The case stemmed from “Operation Westend” sting aired by news portal Tehelka in January 2001.
While convicting the three accused, the court held that they, along with Surender Kumar Surekha (who later turned approver), were party to a criminal conspiracy that took place between December 2000 and January 2001 at Delhi. The court observed that while Ms Jaitley accepted `2 lakh illegally from Mathew Samuel, a representative of fictional company Westend International, Maj Gen Murgai received `20,000.
The illegal money was
Samuel was introduced to Jaitley as a businessman whose company intends to enter the market of defence procurement... Jaitley assured Samuel that in case the product of his firm is not considered, she would intervene by making a request to ‘Sahib’ (purportedly the then defence minister George Fernandes) — CBI special court observed
accepted for obtaining supply orders for hand held thermal imagers from the Army.
They 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 Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act.
The court held 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
■ Continued from Page 1 procuring letter of evaluation for the product of his company from the ministry of defence and also to arrange a meeting between him and accused Jaya Jaitley who would provide political cover to them in this regard.”
“It was agreed that Samuel would pay `1 lakh each to Surekha and Murgai and `2 lakh to Jaitley,” the court noted.
“Thus there had been an agreement between them to obtain the evaluation letter for the concerned product by illegal means, i.e. by resort to corruption and personal influence upon the concerned officials,” it said, adding, “Accordingly, Pacherwal arranged the said meeting for December 28, 2000. He too was present in the said meeting in the room of Jaitley along with Surekha, Samuel and Murgai.”
The court further said, “In that meeting, which took place in the official residence of the then Union minister for defence, George Fernandes, Samuel was introduced to Jaitley as a businessman whose company intends to enter the market of defence procurement. Samuel offered the sum of `2 lakh to Jaitley who instructed him to hand over the money to Pacherwal and accordingly, the money was received by accused Pacherwal knowing that it was bribe money. In lieu thereof, Jaitley assured Samuel that in case the product of his company is not considered, she would intervene by making a request to ‘Sahib’ (purportedly the defence minister, George Fernandes) to send a word to the concerned officer in this regard.”