New Delhi, April 21: Continuing his attack on eminent lawyer and co-chair of the Joint Committee for drafting Lokpal Bill Shanti Bhushan, former Samajwadi party leader and MP Amar Singh said the former was speaking a total lie in saying that he had never spoken to him.
Mr Singh said yesterday he arranged a chartered plane for Mr Bhushan to come to Lucknow for fighting a case against the then UP Chief Minister and SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav, and the lawyer was given Rs 50 lakh as fee by late SP MP and Virendra Bhatia.
“This case is of February 28, 2006. A writ petition was filed in the Allahabad High Court. Shanti Bhushan flew to Lucknow in a chartered plane to fight case for us. He was paid Rs 30 lakh for it and was paid Rs 20 lakh more later (in cash). The CD is from 2006 as well,” he said, addressing a press conference here this evening.
He also wanted to know whether Mr Bhushan paid the income tax for Rs 20 lakh.
Mr Singh also attacked the Bhushans over another allegation that came up today of having got plots in NOIDA out of the discretionary quota of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati.
Mr Singh also said he had broken away a lot of legislators from the BSP to the SP side, and worked as a broker for the SP chief.
After a CD recently surfaced carrying tapes of a purported conversation between Mr Amar Singh and Mr Shanti Bhushan for fixing a judge for Rs four crore in the case against Mr Yadav, Mr Bhushan and his lawyer son Prashant Bhushan have denied having ever talked to the former SP leader, though they said they might have spoken to Mr Yadav at some occasion.
Mr Prashant Bhushan, who is also in the Joint Committee has alleged that Mr Amar Singh was behind the “doctored” CD and he was doing it at the behest of some very powerful people of the country to malign the civil society members of the committee and to derail Anna Hazare’s fight against corruption.
Mr Amar Singh said it was Mr Bhushan who himself might be behind the appearance of the CD. He questioned his claim that he had got the CD examined by a US expert, saying how was it possible that within two days of the appearance of the CD, he had got it tested in US and obtained results.
In fact the CD had reached to Mr Bhushan before it was delivered to a national English daily that first reported about it, he claimed.
The former SP leader said he had now sent the CD to five countries for examination of its authenticity.
The former SP leader accused the father son duo of using PILs to make money. He said while the son files PIL, the father takes up the case of the respondent, and they had thus made a business of it.
–UNI