Former Union Telecom Minister Sukh Ram has been convicted by a special court of corruption in awarding a contract to supply cables to the Central Department of Telecom (DoT) at exorbitant rates. The FIR in the case was registered in November 1996.
Third conviction
Special Judge (CBI) R. P. Pandey held the former Union Minister of State for Communication with independent charge in the P. V. Narasimha Rao Government guilty on charges of taking bribes, criminal misconduct and abuse of official position, besides criminal conspiracy.
The order on sentence will be pronounced on Saturday.
This is the third conviction for Sukh Ram. In February 2009, he was convicted for possessing disproportionate assets worth over Rs.4.25-crore, which he could not account for.
Cash recovered from residence
In 2002, he was sentenced to three years in jail in for causing a loss of Rs.1.66-crore to the Government in the award of a contract to supply communication equipment to a Hyderabad-based firm. Sukh Ram is currently out on bail.
On August 16, 1996, the CBI had searched the residential premises of Sukh Ram, now aged 84, and recovered over Rs.1.16-crore kept in bags and suitcases. From one suitcase, notes worth Rs.9.5-lakh were recovered. Inside this suitcase, an envelope was discovered containing Rs.3-lakh in currency notes of Rs.500 denomination and a visiting card of Sukh Ram's co-accused in the case, D. S. Choudhary, who died during the trial.
Conspiracy
“It shows the nexus of accused Sukh Ram with his co-accused D. S. Choudhary and also that he (Sukh Ram) obtained an illegal gratification from his co-accused D.S. Choudhary to favour M/s HTL, of which he was the Chairman, in matter of allocation of the cable,” Judge Pandey wrote in his order.
In its charge sheet, the CBI had accused Sukh Ram of being part of a conspiracy with D. S. Choudhary, chairman of Rohtak-based Haryana Telecom Limited (HTL) during 1995-1996.
It said through corrupt or illegal means and by abusing his official position as public servant, Sukh Ram caused pecuniary advantage to himself and to HTL in the matter of procurement of 3.5-lakh conductor kilometres (for short LCKM) of Polythene Insulated Jelly-Filled (PIJF) cables costing about Rs.30-crore.
‘Improbable'
Rejecting the defence contention that that it was “improbable” that the accused would accept only Rs.3-lakh if such a huge pecuniary advantage was caused to HTL, the Judge said: “It is not the prosecution case that the accused got only this much amount in this deal which runs into crores of rupees. The prosecution case is that the amount of Rs.3-lakh which was recovered from the accused was the bribe money. It is a matter of common knowledge that it is virtually impossible to get any direct evidence where both, i.e. bribe giver and the person who takes the bribe, worked in joint concert. In cases of bribery, we get direct evidence only where one party reports the matter for taking action.”
