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Videocon, Essar executives deny funding bribery of JMM MPs

Executives of the Videocon and Essar groups of companies today retracted their purported statements to the Central Bureau of Investigation that they knew of payments of Rs70 million to the private secretary of former Union petroleum minister Satish Sharma, an accused in the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha MPs' bribery case.

Turning hostile, the CBI witnesses -- Kuldip Drabu of the Videocon Group and Sandeep Bhargava, manager (administration) of the Essar Group -- told the trial court of Additional Sessions Judge Ajit Bharihoke in New Delhi that they knew nothing of any such payments.

Appearing as the seventieth CBI witness, Drabu said it was incorrect to suggest that he had, on the instructions of his managing director V N Dhoot, handed over Rs10 million each in July and October 1993 to a company executive to be passed on to the minister's secretary.

According to the CBI, the funds were used to bribe opposition MPs to vote against the July 28, 1993, motion of no-confidence against the government of Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, one of the 20 persons accused in the case.

The Essar Group manager also rejected CBI counsel R M Tiwari's suggestion that his company paid Rs30 million in November 1993 and Rs20 million in February 1994 to the minister's secretary, B N Safaya.

Among the other accused in the case are former Union ministers Buta Singh and Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav and former chief ministers Bhajan Lal of Haryana and M Veerappa Moily of Karnataka.

More than 20 of the 71 witnesses who have appeared in the court so far have turned hostile.

UNI

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