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Kailash Joshi, 4 Jains discharged in hawala case

Former Madhya Pradesh chief minister Kailash Joshi and the four Jains were discharged in the Rs 650 million Jain hawala case by a special court today.

In his order, Special Judge V B Gupta said: ''After going through the entire material on record and in addition to the diary, there has been no corroborative evidence and further no specific date, time and place of alleged payment of Rs 10 lakh said to be made to Kailash Joshi, while working as a public servant, and no evidence to show any favour to co-accused Jains which will amount to criminal misconduct.

"Prima facie, no conspiracy is established between Kailash Joshi and three Jain brothers, S K Jain, N K Jain, B R Jain and their employee J K Jain," Judge Gupta said.

In his order, Judge Gupta observed that a prosecution witness, Rajkumar Keswani, who was the Bhopal correspondent of a television channel, had submitted having interviewed Kailash Joshi on February 7, 1996, at his residence. During the course of the interview, Joshi admitted to accepting Rs 1 million from P R Jain "for the party (BJP) fund."

The judge further noted that the said videotape was not produced before the court by the prosecution. No offence could be made out against Joshi based only on Keswani's statement.

Earlier, the Delhi high court had quashed the proceedings against BJP leader L K Advani and Congress leader V C Shukla, stating that diaries and loose sheets could not be converted into legal evidence.

The Central Bureau of Investigation had filed a special leave petition in the Supreme Court against the Delhi high court order which was dismissed recently.

The Supreme Court had also upheld that without independent evidence, merely loose sheets and diaries could not be converted into legal evidence.

Out of 35 chargesheets filed by the CBI, only six are pending in the special court. Charges have been framed against two politicians -- Balram Jakhar and Sharad Yadav. However, Yadav had got a stay order from the Delhi high court, while trial proceedings for Jakhar had started in this special court.

Other politicians whose cases are pending include Kalpnath Rai, Arif Mohammed Khan and Devi Lal.

UNI

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