Lawyer and civil society member on the Lokpal Bill joint drafting panel Prashant Bhushan on Thursday denied that he had spoken at all to the former Samajwadi Party member, Amar Singh, or to anyone else from his office or home.
“Not at all,'' he said when asked by The Hindu if he had spoken to Mr. Singh on Thursday and tried to “gag'' him as claimed by the latter at a press conference.
Mr. Bhushan also denied that he had spoken to Tarun Goyal, Mr. Singh's assistant. In fact, he was totally ignorant about the existence of Mr. Goyal. “Who is he?'' Mr. Bhushan countered when asked if he had spoken to him.
At a hurriedly convened press conference, Mr. Singh claimed that he had received “missed calls'' from a landline and a mobile number around 4 p.m. Since he did not recognise the numbers he did not take the calls. Later Mr. Goyal received calls from two landline numbers, which Mr. Singh alleged were of Mr. Prashant Bhushan and his father Shanti Bhushan.
Mr. Singh said he took the phone-call on Mr. Goyal's mobile phone and claimed that “a voice like Mr. Prashant Bhushan's said that if you remain a tool in the hands of the Congress, you'll get pain but if you work with the civil society you'll gain.”
He claimed that the voice told him that even anonymous complaints filed on the letterheads of the Centre for Judicial Accountability, the Centre for Public Interest Litigation and India Against Corruption were taken note of by the Enforcement Directorate and the Supreme Court and that journalists like Vinod Mehta and Tarun Tejpal were with them.
Demanding a probe into this, he said he would file a complaint with the police and the government. “If you [Mr. Bhushan] try to gag me, I'll pronounce it to the public,'' he declared.
Asked about the result of analysis by the five foreign forensic labs to which he had sent the controversial CD purportedly carrying a conversation between him, SP chief Mulayam Singh and co-chairman of the joint drafting panel Shanti Bhushan, Mr. Amar Singh retorted, “Why should I tell you?''
“Cut & paste conversations”
On the other hand, quoting media reports on the Chandigarh Central Forensic Sciences Laboratory (CFSL) report that said that the said CD had evidence of “cut and paste'' conversations, while the Delhi CFSL had claimed that there was no tampering, Mr. Prashant Bhushan said it was obvious that “senior government functionaries'' were going along with the smear campaign against the Bhushans.
“It is obvious that very senior functionaries in this government have been going along in this entire smear campaign. Only they could have procured such a dishonest report from the [Delhi] CFSL,'' he said.
