Hope Manmohan Singh is proven innocent: Ram Jethmalani

Senior advocate Ram Jethmalani on Thursday expressed sadness over former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh being summoned as an accused in a coal scam case.

"This is bad. I don't want a former PM to be summoned like this, I hope he is proven innocent," he told ANI.

Earlier in the day, Manmohan Singh had expressed his gratitude over the solidarity shown by the Congress Party in his hour of crisis.

"I am more than pleased that Sonia ji and the AICC members came to show their solidarity," he told reporters in parliament.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi led a solidarity march earlier in the day to Dr. Singh's 3, Motilal Nehru residence, in the national capital, and said that the party was outraged on hearing the news of the summons being served by a court on the former prime minister.

She added that the Congress Party is fully behind him.

A special CBI court in Delhi had summoned the former prime minister, former coal secretary P.C. Parakh, industrialist Kumar Manglam Birla and three others in the coal blocks allocation case on Wednesday.

The court summoned them on alleged charges of criminal conspiracy, breach of trust and under various provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. They have all been asked to appear before the court on April 8.

The case pertains to the allocation of the Talabira II coal block in Odisha to M/s Hindalco in 2005, when Dr. Singh was holding the coal portfolio.