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"Justice has been done," former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao said here on Friday.
Reacting to the Delhi High Court verdict acquitting him -- and erstwhile Cabinet colleague Buta Singh -- in the Jharkhand Mukthi Morcha bribery case, Rao told rediff.com that he was delighted that the case "is finally over".
Asked what he thought about the outcome, Rao said he did not wish to elaborate on the legal points raised in court, or on the verdict. "What is there to celebrate?" he asked, in response to another question. "The case is over, it has been decided in my favour, the matter has come to an end, so no more comments need to be made."
Rao's lawyer and Congress MP R K Anand for his part said, "We had argued that the case is false and politically motivated. From day one, we said that Mr Rao had not had any separate meetings with JMM leaders including Shailendra Mahato, as was being alleged. That stand has been upheld by the court and what is more, the court has made critical comments about (former Law Minister) Ram Jethmalani, who has been spearheading the 'crusade' against my client. That says it all."
Anand said the real tragedy lay in the fact that such politically motivated cases had been filed in the first place. "I feel sad," Anand said, "that a man who did a marvellous job for the country during his tenure as prime minister was thus falsely implicated. He could perhaps have changed the destiny of this country, if it had not been for this case. How can you get back the wasted years?"
Earlier on Friday, Justice R S Sodhi of the Delhi high court reversed the September 29, 2000 trial court order convicting Rao and Buta Singh in the JMM bribery case. Rao and Singh had been convicted by Special Judge Ajit Bharihoke on charges of bribing Suraj Mandal, Shailendra Mahato, Simon Marandi and Shibu Soren.
In his order, Justice Sodhi said there was no merit in the petition in the absence of any evidence against the persons acquitted. The court ruled that Mahato, who had turned approver, "is an unreliable witness and there is no corroborative evidence to support his confessional statement".
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