New Delhi: A Delhi court Thursday awarded a four-year jail term to ex-Samata Party president Jaya Jaitley and two others. The jail term was for corruption in a 2000-01 case related to a defence deal, a lawyer said. Special CBI judge Virender Bhat also awarded four-year jail terms to Jaya Jaitley’s former party colleague Gopal Pacherwal and Major General (rtd) SP Murgai. This information was given by Murgai’s advocate Vikram Panwar.
The court, in an in camera proceeding, also imposed a fine of Rs 1,00,000 each on all three convicts. It also directed them to surrender before it till 5.00pm Thursday itself. The three 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 news portal ‘Tehelka’ in January 2001.
The court while convicting the three accused had a few observations. The court held that they, along with Surender Kumar Surekha (who later turned approver), were party to a criminal conspiracy. It took place between December 2000 and January 2001 at Delhi.
The court observed that Jaitley accepted illegal gratification of Rs 2,00,000 from Mathew Samuel, a representative of fictional company ‘Westend International’. Murgai on the other hand, received Rs 20,000. The illegal gratification was accepted for obtaining supply orders for hand held thermal imagers from the army.
All the three accused – Jaitley, 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 Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act.
