The Central Bureau of Investigation on Monday chargesheeted former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and two former ministers in a 10-year-old case pertaining to the alleged receipt of gifts worth Rs 2 crore.
After months of bureaucratic wrangling over the issue, the CBI finally filed the chargesheet before the principal special judge for CBI cases in Chennai. The agency had to secure a sanction from the Tamil Nadu assembly speaker for prosecuting Jayalalithaa as she is a legislator.
Jayalalithaa was chargesheeted under Section 11 of the Prevention of Corruption Act while two former ministers -- K A Sengottaiyn and Alagu Tirunaavukkarasu -- were chargesheeted Section 12 of the Act.
CBI sources said Jayalalithaa received 89 demand drafts worth Rs 2 crore drawn on various banks in Tamil Nadu and purchased in the names of 57 people, besides Rs 15 lakh in cash. The cash and demand drafts were credited to her savings bank account in Canara Bank, Chennai, and these were disclosed by her as gifts in her income tax returns.
The CBI claimed that Jayalalithaa had committed an offence under Section 11 of PCA by allegedly accepting the cash and drafts 'as consideration from persons with whom she had official transactions or had transacted or would have transacted.'
During the probe into the antecedents of the 57 people in whose name the drafts were purchased, 12 names were found to be fictitious while another dozen denied having any knowledge of the matter, they said. The remaining 33, the CBI claimed, had accepted that the drafts had been purchased by them.
Some of them had been absorbed in Jayalalithaa's ministry and others accommodated in lucrative posts in public sector undertakings and as chief executives of other companies, it alleged.
The case was initially registered in 1996 under PCA of 1988 on a complaint by the Director General (Investigations) of Income Tax that related to gifts allegedly received by Jayalalithaa, which she had disclosed in her income tax returns. The matter was later transferred to the CBI, which registered a case in 1996 against Jayalalithaa under section 11 of the Act on the request of the state government.