Jaitly, 2 others put on trial

Jaitly, 2 others put on trial in Tehelka's case against them

Eleven years after a sting operation was done to expose alleged corruption in a defence deal, a special CBI court ordered trial of former Samata Party president Jaya Jaitly and two others charged with taking bribe and criminal conspiracy to influence a fictitious deal.

Special CBI Judge Kawal Jeet Arora on Monday put Jaitly, her erstwhile party colleague Gopal Pacherwal and retired Major General S P Murgai on trial after they pleaded "not guilty" to the charges framed by the court against them for conspiring with each other and "accepting gratification" for obtaining supply order of defence equipment in favour of a private firm.

The case against Jaitly and the other two was lodged on the basis of a sting, 'Operation Westend,' conducted by newsportal tehelka.com in 2000, purportedly exposing alleged corruption in defence deals.

George Fernandes, who was founder of Samata party, was the Defence Minister during the NDA rule when the sting was carried out.

The court framed charges against the trio for offences of criminal conspiracy under IPC and provisions of Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) dealing with 'taking gratification for exercise of personal influence with public servant'.

"Charge for offence under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC read with section 9 (taking gratification for exercise of personal influence with public servant) of the Prevention of Corruption Act (be) framed against all the three accused namely Jayalakshmi Jaitly, Major General S P Murgai (Retd) and Gopal K Pacherwal, which is read over and explained to them, to which they have pleaded not guilty," it said.

The court fixed 20^th April for the commencement of trial against the three when recording of statements of prosecution witnesses would begin. The court has summoned three witnesses for recording of their testimony on 20^th April.

It said the accused, along with one Surender Kumar Surekha who has turned approver, hatched conspiracy to indulge in accepting bribe from Mathew Samuel, representative of M/s Westend International for inducing officials of Ministry of Defence for obtaining supply orders for Hand Held Thermal Imagers (HHTIs) from Army Headquarters in favour of the firm.

The court said being the national president of Samata Party, Jaitly on 28^th December 2000 had allegedly accepted Rs two lakh as "gratification" from Samuel at the official residence of Fernandes.