Ex-HC judge to appear as accused

NEW DELHI: The stage is set for former Delhi High Court judge Shameet Mukherjee to appear before a city court as an accused himself. He will take the accused box for allegedly seeking sexual favours and giving a judgement in favour of a hotelier in the DDA land scam case. Additional sessions judge HP Sharma on Wednesday took cognizance of a chargesheet filed by the CBI on April 5 and summoned the former judge along with four others to appear before the court.The CBI alleged that Mukherjee had availed of the services of 50 massage girls as bribe to give a decision in favour of the hotelier who built a restaurant on government land in Vasant Kunj area. The girls were supplied to Mukherjee over a period of time by a massage service provider who was paid Rs 1.5 lakh for the services by middleman and co-accused Dharamvir Khattar, the CBI said. Fixing the matter for July 8, Sharma said: "On perusal of the chargesheet, statements of witnesses and material on record, I take cognizance of the offence." Apart from Mukherjee, four others named in the chargesheet include former DDA vice-chairman Subhash Sharma, Khattar, former cop-turned-hotelier Vinod Khatri ... ...and Sharma's suspended personal secretary Ashok Kapoor under 120-b (criminal conspiracy) of IPC and various sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act including abuse of official position. The case was registered on April 29, 2003. The investigating agency supported its claims about Mukherjee's alleged weakness for massage girls by producing documentary evidence apart from a large number of explicit telephonic conversations. Producing a compact disc allegedly containing details about 100 telephone calls showing the conspiracy in the case, the investigating agency said in the chargesheet that gold bars weighing 24 kg, worth Rs 1.44 crore, were offered to Sharma by Khattar. The bars were bought from MMTC, Jhandewalan, against cash payments and passed on to Sharma as illegal gratification in this case and in other cases. According to the chargesheet, Khatri, a dismissed cop of Delhi Police had illegally grabbed land in Kishangarh village as also a stretch of land adjacent to Aruna Asaf Ali Road, Vasant Kunj. A hotel was operating from the encroached land.