NEW DELHI: A special court in Delhi on Wednesday reserved its order on the sentencing of former Samata Party president Jaya Jaitley and two others, who were recently convicted in connection with a corruption case related to a 2001 defence deal.
Special CBI Judge Virender Bhat decided to reserve the order for Thursday (July 29) after concluding the arguments on the quantum of the sentence from both sides.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) sought maximum punishment against the Jaitley and two others. During submissions, the investigating agency said the convicts should be firmly dealt with as the crime was of very serious nature and be given the maximum seven years jail term.
The counsel appearing for the convicted persons, however, sought leniency on the ground that they were of old age, court sources said.
On July 21, the court had convicted Jaitly, her erstwhile party colleague Gopal Pacherwal and retired Major General SP Murgai under charges of dealing with criminal conspiracy of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 9 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
The court noted that Jaitly received a sum of Rs 2 lakhs through accused Gopal Pacherwal from a prosecution witness as a motive reward for agreeing to accomplish the task given to her, which was to exert personal influence upon the concerned ministers and officers in pushing the product of the company of witness into the Indian Army.
Similarly, accused Murgai received a sum of Rs 20,000 from the witness on January 4, 2001, in lieu of the assistance rendered by him in fulfilling the object of the conspiracy, like arranging a meeting with accused Jaya Jaitly and securing a letter of evaluation for the product of the company of witness by the exercise of personal influence upon the concerned officers, the court observed.
In 2012, the court had framed charges against Jaitley, Gopal Pacherwal, and Murgai for corruption in the purported purchase of hand-held thermal imagers. The case had stemmed out of a sting operation aired by news portal tehelka.com in January 2001.
The CBI, in its charge-sheet against the three persons filed in 2006, had alleged that the accused accepted illegal gratification from Mathew Samuel, who is a representative of company Westend International. The illegal gratification was accepted for obtaining supply orders for hand-held thermal imagers from the army, the probe agency had said.