Telgi pleads guilty- Gets 13 Years Jail

Pune, June 28 (IANS) Abdul Karim Telgi, the prime accused in the multi-billion rupee fake stamp paper scam, was Thursday sentenced to 13 years in jail and fined Rs.500 million by a special court here Thursday after he pleaded guilty to all charges against him.

Additional Sessions Judge Chitra K. Bedi said the convict would have to undergo an additional jail term of three years if he fails to pay the fine.

The judge of the special court, set up under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), also sentenced 42 co-accused to jail terms ranging from one year to seven years.

Pronouncing the sentences, the judge observed that the court might have passed much more strict sentence had the accused not pleaded guilty.

This was the first and the most important in a series of 49 cases related to the Rs.30 billion scandal of issuing fake stamp papers.

It was this case that took the lid off the scam, masterminded by the 46-year-old stamp vendor and spread over nearly a dozen states.

The Bundgarden police here had registered the case after seizure of fake government stamps and stamp papers from a car in 2002. It was later transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The scandal involved large-scale printing, circulation and sale of counterfeit government stamp papers and other security instruments by an organised crime syndicate headed by Telgi.

Earlier in the day, Telgi pleaded guilty amid high drama in the courtroom.With folded hands and tearful eyes, he answered the judge's queries and said he was aware of the huge loss to the national exchequer caused by his actions.

Saying "sorry" to the country for his crime, he added that his wife had persuaded him to admit his guilt unconditionally.

Following his confession, Telgi's counsel Harshad Nimbalkar appealed to the court to take a lenient view on punishing him and take into account his HIV-positive status.

CBI counsel Raja Thakre opposed the plea, saying, "A lenient view of this criminal who is now shedding crocodile tears should not influence the quantum of sentence as it will send wrong signals to the people and imply that anyone can get away softly despite the magnitude of the crime."

Telgi, currently lodged in Yerwada Central Jail here, had Wednesday conveyed his desire to plead guilty through his counsel after 42 of his co-accused had done the same.

In a sensational disclosure during a narco-analysis test in 2003, Telgi had named several powerful politicians and officials as his accomplices. But all of the politicians named by him had denied charges.

The CBI had also filed charge sheets against former Mumbai Police Commissioner R.S. Sharma and two other senior police officers, but they were discharged Wednesday by the court for lack of evidence.

Telgi's first conviction came in January last year, when the Pune court sentenced him to 10 years in prison for counterfeiting government stamps.

In March this year, a special court in Bangalore sentenced him to another 10 years in jail for forgery and cheating. Subsequently, he was given terms of 15 years and seven years in two more cases.

Telgi's third sentence came in April when the special court sentenced him to 15 years for forgery and conspiring to cheat the state.

On June 21, the same court sentenced him to seven years in prison for bribing two government doctors to get a fake medical certificate to secure bail.