By IANS
New Delhi : Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh Monday handed over to Delhi Police a person who was allegedly asking money from him to help fix a corruption case against party president and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Plainclothes personnel took away the person, B.K. Verma, from Amar Singh's residence, 27 Lodhi Estate.
Amar Singh told reporters that he had been receiving phone calls for some months from Verma who "claimed to be a law officer and seemed to be aware of the disproportionate assets case".
"He demanded Rs.50 million to fix the case in our favour. He claimed to personally know Justice (A.R.) Lakshmanan and the petitioner in the case, Vishwanath Chaturvedi," he said.
"Initially, I ignored these calls. Later when I was admitted to the Batra Hospital, this man attempted to break my security ring and reach me there. Some days back Verma called up again and made patently false claims about Justice Lakshmanan and Chaturvedi," said Amar Singh.
In March this year shortly before he retired, Justice A R Lakshmanan broke down in the Supreme Court alleging that he had received an anonymous letter on the day he was to hear a review petition by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav's son Akhilesh Yadav on the Central Bunreau of Investigations (CBI) probe.
The CBI is probing into complaints of the Yadav family accumulating assets disproportionate to their known sources of income. Akhilesh Yadav had moved a petition seeking review of the case made out in the allegations against the Yadav family.
"This morning when he again called up my secretary Gitanjali, I decided to call his bluff and asked my secretary to invite him over to my house. After treating him to tea and snacks, I told him I was ready to pay him Rs.10 million as advance. Then I started chatting him up to find out more about him and also called up Delhi Police Commissioner K.K. Paul who immediately rushed a police team."
Saying that the man "appears to be some kind of a cheat or fraud", Amar Singh said he wanted police to investigate the matter.
He said it was a strange coincidence that "only today some intruder broke into Amitabh Bachchan's house in Mumbai". The film actor is known to be a close friend of Amar Singh.
The Supreme Court in March had directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the allegations of Mulayam, his MP son Akhilesh and the family amassing assets disproportionate to their known sources of income.