The Hindu : Tehelka panel gets six months extension

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 04, 2004

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National

Tehelka panel gets six months extension

By Our Legal Correspondent

New Delhi Jan. 3. The Centre today extended by another six months the term of the Justice Phukan Commission of Inquiry probing the defence scam exposed by the Tehekla portal in March 2001.

The panel has completed one year. Justice K. Venkataswami, who was investigating the scam earlier, resigned in November 2002.

It is doubtful whether the Commission will be able to complete the enquiry and submit its report before the Lok Sabha elections, expected in April/May.

When Justice Venkataswami resigned, the draft report relating to past defence transactions was almost ready. The Commission had held 181 sittings, examined 50 witnesses and passed 720 interim orders; 961 pages of depositions regarding 15 past defence deals had been recorded.

Justice Phukan, who took over in January last, has since held 56 sittings and passed over 40 orders.

The most important was the one referring the Tehelka tapes for forensic examination to determine whether "they are Hi8 camera originals or if they had been subjected to interpolations, doctoring or tampering or editing... "

The Commission, thereby reversed the earlier orders passed by his predecessor, Justice Venkataswami, rejecting pleas from the Centre, the former Samata Party president, Jaya Jaitly and others.

Ms. Jaitly got a shot in the arm when the forensic expert in the United Kingdom, in his interim report, expressed doubts about the authenticity of certain portions of the videotapes.

In the light of this report, the Justice Phukan Commission asked the Tehelka portal to produce the original equipment used in the sting operation.

The chief of the portal, Tarun Tejpal, turned down the request.

The Commission referred the tapes to an independent expert in the U.K. after Ms. Jaitly and the former BJP president, Bangaru Lakshman, demonstrated through film experts that it was possible that the tapes had been tampered with.

In his communication sent to the Commission, the British expert said: "We find that there are some areas of doubt that remain, without having access to the original recording equipment."

The expert had said that the original equipment was necessary, as "this would enable me to make relevant test recordings on the original equipment and obtain measurements and undertake comparisons of the video signal outside of the normal recorded picture area."

Since the final report from the British expert is still awaited, the Commission requires more time to complete the probe, sources said.

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