Former Samata Party president Jaya Jaitly and two others have been awarded four-year jail term by a Delhi court for corruption in a
2000-01 case related to a purported defence deal, a lawyer said.

Jaitly’s former party colleague Gopal Pacherwal and Major General (rtd) SP Murgai were also awarded four-year jail term in the case by Special CBI judge Virender Bhat, Murgai’s advocate Vikram Panwar said.

The court has also imposed a fine of Rs
1 lakh each on all three convicts and directed them to surrender before it till
5pm on Thursday itself.  The three were held guilty of corruption and
criminal conspiracy in the purported purchase of hand-held thermal imagers.

The case stemmed from ‘Operation Westend’ sting aired by news
portal Tehelka in January 2001.

While convicting the three accused, the court had held that
they, along with Surender Kumar Surekha (who later turned approver), were party
to a criminal conspiracy that took place between 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 hand held thermal imagers from the army.  All the three accused
— Jaitly, 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 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”.

It was agreed that Samuel would pay Rs 1 lakh each to Surekha
and Murgai and Rs 2 lakh to Jaitley, the court noted.

“Thus there had been an agreement between them to obtain
the evaluation letter for the concerned product by illegal means i.e. by resort
to corruption and personal influence upon the concerned officials,” it
said, adding that “accordingly, Pacherwal arranged the said meeting for
December 28, 2000. He too was present in the said meeting in the room of Jaitly
along with Surekha, Samuel and Murgai”.

The court further said: “In that meeting, which took place
in the official residence of the then Union Minister for Defence, George
Fernandes, Samuel was introduced to Jaitley as a businessman whose company
intends to enter the market of defence procurement.  “Samuel offered
the sum of Rs 2 lakh to Jaitly who instructed him to handover the money to
Pacherwal and accordingly, the money was received by accused Pacherwal knowing
that it was bribe money. In lieu thereof, Jaitley assured Samuel that in case
the product of his company is not considered, she would intervene by making a
request to ”Sahib” (purportedly the Defence Minister Mr. George Fernandes) to
send a word to the concerned officer in this regard”.

The court said both the accused, Pacherwal and Jaitley, are also
guilty of the offence of conspiracy.

“Jaitly received a sum of Rs 2 lakhs through Pacherwal
from Samuel as a motive/reward for agreeing to accomplish the task given to her
i.e. to exert personal influence upon the concerned Ministers/Officers in
pushing the product of the company of Samuel into the Indian Army,” it
said.

Similarly, Murgai received Rs 20,000 from Samuel on January 4,
2000 in lieu of the assistance rendered by him in arranging a meeting with
Jaitley and securing letter of evaluation for the product of the company of by
exercise of personal influence upon the concerned officers, the court noted.

“Therefore,
both of them have committed offence envisaged under Section 9 of the PC
Act,” it said.