NEW DELHI, July 2:
Former Samata Party President Jaya Jaitly, facing trial for allegedly taking Rs two lakh as bribe in December 2000 to recommend a fictitious defence deal to the Defence Ministry, today moved a Delhi court seeking permission to “retain” her passport.
The court sought the CBI’s response by July 12 on Jaitly’s plea to hold back her passport permanently.
She appeared before Special CBI Judge Kanwaljeet Arora to submit her passport after attending ten days of a panel debate at Singapore on “Smith Women Leading Change: Asia 2012” on permission from the court.
In her application, she sought the release of her passport saying that she needed it every now and then to visit abroad to attend such panel discussion on various issues.
Jaitly’s counsel submitted that she is a social activist and had been granted such permissions earlier also and she never misused the relief.
The lawyer further said if she be allowed to retain her passport permanently, she will not seek any adjournment on account of her unavailability.
The counsel also said she will not leave India without prior information to the court.
Jaitly along with her erstwhile party colleague Gopal Pacherwal and retired Major General S P Murgai is facing trial for allegedly conspiring with each other for “accepting bribe” for obtaining supply order of defence equipment in favour of a private firm.
The case against Jaitly, Pacherwal and Murgai was lodged on the basis of a sting ‘Operation Westend’ conducted by newsportal tehelka.Com in 2000, purportedly exposing alleged corruption in defence deals.
George Fernandes, who was founder of Samata Party, was the defence minister during the NDA rule when the sting was carried out.
The court had framed charges against the trio for offences of criminal conspiracy under the IPC and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act dealing with taking bribe to influence a public servant.
It had said the accused, along with one Surender Kumar Surekha who has turned approver, hatched conspiracy to accept bribe from Mathew Samuel, representative of M/s Westend International for inducing officials of Ministry of Defence for obtaining supply orders for Hand Held Thermal Imagers (HHTIs) from Army Headquarters in favour of the firm.
The court had said being the national president of Samata Party, Jaitly on December 28, 2000 had allegedly accepted Rs two lakh as “gratification” from Samuel at the official residence of Fernandes. (PTI)
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