Graft case: Defence employee gets 18 months jail term

A 37-year-old man, who was working with Defence Accounts Department, has been sentenced to one year and six months in jail by a Delhi court for demanding and accepting a bribe of Rs 8,000 from a food contractor to clear his bills.
Special CBI Judge Poonam Bamba awarded the jail term to Samay Singh Meena, Auditor at the office of Joint Controller of Defence Accounts (Navy), after holding him guilty under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act relating to demanding and accepting bribe and public servant misusing his official position.
The court also imposed a fine of Rs 20,000 on Meena, a resident of Dwarka here.

It allowed Meena's plea for suspending his sentence till May 2 for the purpose of filing an appeal against his conviction and punishment.
The court, however, acquitted co-accused Arvind Kumar Tony, saying CBI has failed to prove the charges against him.
According to CBI, complainant Umakant Sharma who was engaged in the business of ration supply was also an approved government contractor and he had been awarded several local purchase orders during March, May and June, 2011 for supplying food items to INS India, Ministry of Defence here.

Sharma supplied the items and raised eight bills out of which one bill was passed and rest were kept pending, it said.

CBI said Meena had demanded Rs 1500 per bill from Sharma for clearing them and also told him that the bills would not be cleared if the bribe was not paid. He had also sought a bribe for the bill which has been cleared.
In August 2011, Sharma had approached CBI alleging that Meena had demanded bribe from him and a trap was laid and after negotiations, Rs 1000 per bill was fixed making a total of Rs 8,000 for eight bills.
The bribe amount was paid to Meena in a car and he was caught red-handed by CBI with the money.

During the trial, Meena had claimed he was falsely implicated in the case and the bribe amount was forcibly given to him.
The court, however, convicted and awarded the jail term taking a lenient view noting that he was a young man and was having roots in the society.