MTNL official, conduit get three year jail in graft case

A MTNL official and the consultant of a private firm were on Tuesday awarded three years jail term by a Delhi court for demanding and accepting bribe for clearing the bills of a contractor.

"The conspiracy between the two accused to extract a bribe of Rs 85,000 from the complainant for clearing his bills has been proved beyond reasonable doubt," Additional Sessions Judge OP Saini said. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 each on
convicts Damber Singh, an official of state-owned Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) and D P Verma, a consultant of private firm TCIL after holding them guilty under the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act.
 
The court ordered release of bribe amount of Rs 15,000, which was recovered from the convict, to complainant Anil Bhasin. The convicts were trapped by CBI on May 27, 2004 following a complaint by Bhasin, an ex-armyman and proprietor of M/s R A Enterprises, alleging they were demanding Rs 85,000 for clearing his bills of Rs 7.5 lakhs.

The TCIL, which was authorised by the MTNL to undertake the job of trenching and cables' laying in some localities of south Delhi, had awarded the contract to the firm owned by Bhasin in 2000. Even after completion of the job, Bhasin was being denied payments by TCIL on the ground that his bills were to be cleared by Damber Singh who was demanding the bribe for clearing them.