Ex-Samata Party chief Jaya Jaitley, two others sentenced to four years imprisonment in corruption case

New Delhi: Former Samata Party President Jaya Jaitley and two others were on Thursday sentenced to four years in prison by a special court in Delhi in connection with a corruption case related to a 2001 defence deal, a lawyer said.

Special CBI Judge Virender Bhat directed the three convicts -- Jaitley, her former party colleague Gopal Pacherwal and Major General (retired) SP Murgai -- to surrender before it by 5 pm today and also imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh each, said advocate Vikram Panwar, the lawyer for of one of the convicts.

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, 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 had 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 a news portal 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.