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Another CBI witness turns hostile in JMM bribery case

Yet another Central Bureau of Investigation witness Virender Singh, an advocate, turned hostile today in the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha MPs bribery case against former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao and 19 others.

With this, three prosecution witnesses have turned hostile in the case. Earlier, key witnesses Devender Mukhia, allegedly close to accused and former Haryana chief minister Bhajan Lal, and Captain Dilawar Singh, then secretary to former Union Minister Ajit Singh, had denied having given any statement to the CBI stating that they had seen bribes being paid to Opposition MPs.

Virender Singh today denied in the trial court of Additional Sessions Judge Ajit Bharihoke that he had given the CBI a video cassette, allegedly containing Bhajan Lal's speech on the reported bribing of Opposition MPs to defeat the July 28, 1993, no-confidence motion against the Rao government.

The witness, who is practising law at Hansi in Hissar district of Haryana, however, admitted that he had given the CBI a video cassette left with him by one of his clients whose name he did not know. He was also not aware of whether the cassette was blank or recorded.

Asked by the judge to identify whether a sealed cassette submitted to the court was the one he had handed over to the CBI, Singh said it was not. The cassette he had given to the CBI had a green sticker and was loaded with a full spool of tape and this was not the case with the one with the court, he said.

According to the CBI, the video cassette contained the speech of Bhajan Lal at a temple function in Hissar on August 11, 1993 referring to the bribing of MPs.

The court has asked the CBI to clarify tomorrow its stand on nine of the accused sought to be discharged in the light of the April 17 Supreme Court judgment stating that the acts of MPs pertaining to voting in Parliament were immune to court proceedings.

The MPs coming under this category are all the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leaders -- accused Suraj Mandal, Shibu Soren, Simon Marandi and approver Shailendra Mahato -- former Union minister Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav, Roshan Lal, Anadi Saran Das, Abhay Pratap Singh and Haji Ghulam Mohammed.

The other accused in the case include former Karnataka chief minister M Veerappa Moily and former Union ministers Ajit Singh, Buta Singh and Satish Sharma.

UNI

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