Faith in judiciary shaken, I forgive you: Kumar to judge

IAS officer Sanjiv Kumar, convicted along with former Haryana chief minister O P Chautala and 53 others in the JBT recruitment scam, created a ruckus in a Delhi court on Thursday, claiming he is a whistleblower whose faith in judiciary stood "shaken and shattered."

While arguing on the quantum of sentence, he told Special CBI Judge Vinod Kumar that he has "pardoned" him (judge) for convicting him despite he "being the whistle blower", PTI reported.

Kumar, the erstwhile director of primary education in Haryana, who initially exposed the scam with a plea in the Supreme Court but was also found involved in it during the CBI probe, also said he wanted to apologise to all the convicts in the case barring Chautala, his MLA son Ajay Chautala, the then OSD to CM Vidya Dhar and the then political advisor to the CM, Sher Singh Badshami.

"Main aapko apni antar atma se maaf karta hoon (I pardon you from my soul). My faith has been shaken and shattered as I had exposed the scam and was the whistle blower but I also have been convicted by the court," Sanjiv Kumar told the special CBI judge, while arguing on the quantum of sentence, said PTI.

He also said he wanted to go to prison number 5 of the Tihar Jail where the other convicts in the case are kept and to apologise them as "neither they nor I committed anything wrong" and are behind bars because "I had exposed the crime."

He also sought leniency in the sentence saying if he is sent to jail it would cause irreparable loss to his children and damage to their career.

"Yesterday, when you (judge) had pronounced the judgment, you were not the same person whom I had seen during the whole trial. It was something vicious. Very firmly you had ordered to take all the convicts into custody," he told the judge.

... contd.

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