Panja, Shiv Shankar, Sinha and Vora discharged in Jain hawala case

Former Union ministers Ajit Kumar Panja, P Shiv Shankar, former Uttar Pradesh governor Motilal Vora, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha and the Jain brothers were discharged by Special Judge V B Gupta in the Rs 650 million Jain hawala case in New Delhi on Wednesday.

The judge said there was no prima facie evidence against the accused which could be converted into legal evidence.

With this 20 accused in the hawala case have been discharged by the Delhi high court and the trial court. These include Bharatiya Janata Party president L K Advani and former Union ministers V C Shukla, Arjun Singh, Madhavrao Scindia, N D Tiwari and R K Dhawan and former Delhi chief minister Madan Lal Khurana.

The discharge of the accused was set in motion by the high court on April 8 when Justice Mohammad Shamim quashed the proceedings against Advani and Shukla.

Allowing the petitions by Advani and Shukla challenging the special judge's order, Justice Shamim had ruled in his 70-page judgment that the Jain diaries could not be converted into legal evidence against them.

Allowing similar petitions by the Jain brothers, S K Jain, N K Jain and B R Jain and their employee, J K Jain, the high court quashed the proceedings against them too. The court thus set aside three orders -- of May 8, 1996, August 19, 1996, and September 6, 1996 -- of the special judge.

"In the present case there is no evidence against the petitioners except the diaries, notebooks and loose sheets with regard to the alleged payments. The said evidence is of such a nature which cannot be converted into a legal evidence against the petitioners," the high court had observed.

The quashing of charges against Advani and Shukla by the high court triggered a spate of petitions with the trial court by other politicians involved in the hawala case, seeking exoneration.

On May 16 last, Judge Gupta discharged Khurana and the four Jains, stating that the Central Bureau of Investigation had failed to produce any evidence which could be converted into ''legal evidence'' to frame charges against the accused.

''There is no prima facie evidence against any of the accused which can be converted into legal evidence, and thus there is no material on record for framing charges against any of the accused, and as such the case of the prosecution fails and all the accused are hereby discharged," the judgment said.

Even as the government was considering the CBI request to file a special leave petition with the Supreme Court challenging the high court order, Judge Gupta discharged Arjun Singh, Tiwari, Scindia, Dhawan and the Jains on May 28.

Citing the high court order, he said, ''When the diaries, notebooks and loose sheets cannot be legal evidence in one case arising out of the same first information report, then certainly it cannot be legal evidence in the present cases based on the same FIR.

''Further there is hardly any evidence to establish that any favour was shown by any of the accused to any of the Jains,'' the judge said.

Sinha claimed the case was politically motivated. "It is not the day of triumph or glory for me. It is a sad chapter in my life. I am sorry I was dragged into all this without any proof. The whole case was politically motivated to defame us,'' he said.

Vora said, ''I have full faith in the judiciary. With this order the people have regained faith in the judicial system''.

Panja too was relieved. ''I am happy as I am able to keep up the prestige of my constituency and my voters. I will go back to them and serve them''. He regretted that his mother and wife could not witness his exoneration; both died in the past year.

''I won my election from Calcutta when the charge was framed against me," Panja said, adding that, "I had to attend court 30 times for the case. In 30 years of political life not a finger was raised against me.