Ex-Samata party chief, 2 others get 4-year jail
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 Jaitley’s four-year jail term. The High Court has sought the CBI’s response on Jaitley’s appeal challenging her conviction and sentence in the case.
Jaitley, her former party colleague Gopal Pacherwal and Major General (retd) S.P. Murgai were held guilty of corruption and criminal conspiracy in the purported purchase of hand-held thermal imagers.
The case stemmed from ‘Operation Westend’ sting aired by a news portal 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 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 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 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 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.”