New Delhi:
For the record, he executed the first official telecom scam in the country. Fifteen years on, the law finally caught up with former Telecom Minister Sukhram as a Delhi court today sentenced him to five years of rigorous imprisonment for accepting a bribe of Rs three lakh and showing undue favour to a private firm in 1996. Apart from the five-year jail term, he will also have to pay a fine of Rs. 4 lakh.
And as if in a quirk of destiny, Mr Sukhram will now be lodged in jail number 1 at the Tihar Jail which is shared by another former Telecom Minister A Raja, who is accused of masterminding the more famous 2G spectrum scam, arguably the country's biggest to date.
Both incidentally were part of governments led by the Congress at the Centre when the scams took place.
Mr Sukhram, 86, was convicted yesterday by the court for misusing his official position during his tenure as Telecom Minister in P V Narasimha Rao's Cabinet in giving a contract worth Rs 30 crore to a private firm, Haryana Telecom Limited (HTL), to supply 3.5 Lakh Conductor Kilometers (LCKM) of Polythene Insulated Jelly Filled (PIJF) cables to the telecom department. The former minister had already been convicted in two other cases of corruption and disproportionate assets.
The counsel for Mr Sukhram had earlier pleaded for leniency in the court on grounds of his old age, but the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which probed the case dubbed him a "habitual offender" and sought maximum punishment for him.
(Read)Reacting to the sentencing, the Congress, during whose regime Sukhram unleashed the scam, said that it respected the court's order. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), meanwhile, which once had a tie-up with him in Himachal Pradesh when he had launched his own party, got yet another opportunity to corner the Congress over corruption.
"The way in which the court has taken the time to punish the guilty is important. The judicial system needs changes otherwise people will lose faith", BJP President Nitin Gadkari said.
The day, though, had its fair share of drama as a man attacked Mr Sukhram while the latter was being taken out of the court by the police.
The assailant, identified as Harvinder Singh, slapped and kicked the 86-year-old but was nabbed by the cops soon after.
"There should have been better security arrangements in court. We saw this in the Ruchika Girhotra case also", said CBI prosecutor C S Sharma.
Mr Sukhram's lawyers now say that they will appeal against the order in the Delhi High Court by next week.