NEW DELHI, Apr 11: A Delhi court on Monday summoned former defence secretary Shashi Kant Sharma as it took cognisance of a supplementary charge sheet in the AgustaWestland chopper scam.
Special Judge Arvind Kumar took cognisance of the final report and summoned Sharma to appear on April 28 after the CBI submitted that the sanction to prosecute him has been granted by the authorities concerned.
“I have gone through the material on record and heard the counsel for the CBI. Issue summons to accused Shashi Kant Sharma for April 28, 2022,” the judge said.
The charge sheet also named retired Indian Air Force (IAF) officers Jasbir Singh Panesa, N Santosh, S A Kunte and Thomas Mathew, but the CBI said the requisite sanction to prosecute them is yet to be procured from the authorities concerned.
The first charge sheet in the case was filed in September 2017 naming former IAF chief SP Tyagi and others.
The agency had earlier told the court that “during the course of investigation, copies of classified/ secret official documents of Indian Air Force (IAF)/ Ministry of Defence (MoD) such as Operational Requirements for VVIP helicopters before issuance of Request of Proposal and other incriminating documents running into more than one lakh pages received from Italy and Switzerland.”
It had also said that a “payment sheet” recovered from Michel, prepared on his dictation, shows that an amount of 30 million euro was paid/ proposed to be paid to the officers of IAF, MoD, bureaucrats, politicians and family in India for showing favour in the VVIP helicopter deal.
It said that out of the kickbacks received from AgustaWestland, middleman Christian Michel James further made payments to various persons in India.
The agencies had told the court that Michel made 24.25 million euros and 1,60,96,245 pounds from the now-scrapped AgustaWestland deal.
The CBI has alleged that the deal signed in February 2010 to supply VVIP choppers worth 556.262 million euros caused an estimated loss of 398.21 million euros to the state exchequer. (PTI)
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