Delhi High Court has stayed the four-year jail term awarded to former Samata party chief Jaya Jaitly and two other accused in a 2001 corruption case by a Delhi trial court yesterday. Rs 1 lakh fine has also been imposed on all the three convicts.
High Court has sought CBI’s reply on the plea filed by Jaya Jaitly against July 30 order of a trial court where she is convicted and sentenced.
After convicting three people – Ex-Samata Party chief Jaya Jaitly, Gopal Pacherwal, and Major General (retired) SP Murgai, Delhi trial court on Thursday has sentenced four-year jail term to all the three convicts and has imposed Rs 1 lakh fine on each.
They were convicted of an offence of conspiracy (Section 120-B IPC) read with Section 9 of the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act.
“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 Ministry of Defence and also to arrange a meeting between him and accused Jaya Jaitly who would provide political cover to them in this regard,” observed the trial court.
In 2001, a new channel Tehelka aired a sting operation “Operation Westend” showing the accused receiving the bribe from one of the reporter of the channel who faked himself as a company representative. The money was accepted for obtaining supply orders for handheld thermal imagers from the Indian army.
