Cash-for-vote scam arrests a culmination of SC-monitored probe: Congress

Congress today sought to absolve itself in the that helped its government survive in July 2008, suggesting that the arrests in the case including that of Amar Singh was the culmination of a Supreme Court monitored probe.

"People who like to have salicious and spicy interests in throwing things around should realise and have perhaps forgotten that the arrests we have seen today come at the conclusion of a very closely monitored apex court investigation," party spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi told reporters here.

He was replying to a volley of questions on whether Amar Singh's arrest could lead to the doors of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the UPA.

"Fortunately the legal system is not based upon perceptions but on facts. ...this is your wrong conception that motive is seen in  a case. Motive plays no role in criminal law, I say as a lawyer," he said when told that in people's perception UPA was the end beneficiary of the episode.

Noting that the court monitoring of the case was going on for almost two months or so, the Congress spokesperson also cautioned "when you make allegations about the motivated or non-motivated nature of the arrest, you should be careful that you are not by implication making allegations against the apex court itself, which has monitored every aspect of it."

He said that the charge sheet was filed pursuant to that monitoring by the Supreme Court, which had only two or three days ago observed that law must take its own course now and lifted its monitoring.