New Delhi: The CBI has sought maximum punishment of 7-year jail term for former Samata Party president Jaya Jaitley and two others, held guilty of corruption in a 2000-01 case related to a purported defence deal.
Special CBI judge Virender Bhat, who had held Jaitley, her former party colleague Gopal Pacherwal and Major General (retired) S P Murgai guilty of corruption and criminal conspiracy in the purported purchase of hand-held thermal imagers, reserved the order for Thursday.
The case stemmed out of a sting operation 'Operation Westend' aired by a news portal in January 2001.
During the proceedings held in-camera, the CBI said the convicts should be dealt with firmly as the crime was of very serious nature and be given the maximum jail term of seven years.
The counsel appearing for the convict persons, however, sought leniency on the ground that they were aged, the court sources said.
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The court had held that all the three accused people, along with Surender Kumar Surekha (who later turned approver), were a party to a criminal conspiracy that took place around December 2000 and January 2001 at Delhi.
The court observed that while Jaitley accepted illegal gratification of Rs 2 lakh from Mathew Samuel, a representative of fictional company Westend International, Murgai received Rs 20,000.
The illegal gratification was accepted for obtaining supply orders for handheld 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.
The court held that 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'.
The court said it was agreed that Samuel would pay Rs 1 lakh each to Surekha and Murgai and Rs 2 lakh to accused Jaitley in this regard.
