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New Delhi: Rajya Sabha MP and former high-profile
Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Amar Singh will be questioned by the
Delhi Police Friday for allegedly buying the support of three
parliamentarians during the 2008 trust vote necessitated by the
Left parties withdrawing support to the government over the
India-US nuclear deal.
Informed sources told IANS that the former general secretary of
Mulayam Singh's SP will be confronted with two witnesses - Sanjeev
Saxena and Suhail Hindustani - who are already in police custody
for their role in what came to be known as the cash-for-votes
scam.
The questioning is likely to take place Friday afternoon, the
sources said.
They said the questioning of Amar Singh, who has held many
prestigious posts in the past including the chairman of Uttar
Pradesh Development Council, was cleared after the statements by
Hindustani and Saxena.
Hindustani, a former member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
Yuva Morcha, was arrested by the police Wednesday - the second
person to be held in the case after Saxena.
Both the arrested accused have named Amar Singh in the alleged
horse trading.
Bags filled with currency notes were shown in the Lok Sabha July
22, 2008, minutes before a trust vote was to take place.
The investigation into the case was speeded up after the Supreme
Court last week slammed Delhi Police for their callous approach in
the case.
Saxena, Amar Singh's former aide, alleged that the then SP leader
had provided Rs.1 crore for getting the support of three BJP MPs
in the 2008 trust vote after the Left parties withdrew support to
the United Progressive Alliance (UPA).
Hindustani, who allegedly played the liason between the SP leader
and the BJP MPs, also levelled the same allegations against Amar
Singh, saying he was the "main" man behind the scandal.
Also to be quizzed by the Crime Branch of Delhi Police would be
SP's Reoti Raman Singh and BJP leader Ashok Argal.
Sudheendra Kulkarni, former aide of BJP leader L.K. Advani, will
also be questioned, said the source.
In a related development, a Delhi court Thursday sent Hindustani
to a day's police remand and also extended the police custody of
co-accused Saxena. His three-day police remand ended Thursday.
The political storm over the scam had rocked parliament and is
likely to remain in the focus of the opposition during the monsoon
session beginning Aug 1.
In its reaction to the developments in the scam, the BJP said that
police should distinguish between those who indulged in corruption
in the controversy and those who blew the lid off the scandal.
Party spokesman Prakash Javadekar said if police investigations
were done properly, the real picture about the scam would come out
in 15 days.
"We are extending full cooperation. If investigation is done in
the correct manner, the real picture will emerge about how the
Congress took recourse to corruption (in the trust vote)," he
said.
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