CBI chargesheets J Jayalalithaa

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has chargesheeted former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and two former ministers in a 10-year-old case of alleged receipt of gifts worth over Rs 2 crore by her.

After months of bureaucratic wrangling over the issue, the CBI finally filed the chargesheet on Monday before the Principal Special Judge of CBI cases in Chennai after the agency got a sanction for prosecution from the Tamil Nadu Assembly Speaker as Jayalalithaa is an MLA.

While Jayalalithaa was chargesheeted under section 11 of the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA), two former ministers K A Sengottaiyn and Alagu Tirunaavukkarasu were chargesheeted by the CBI under section 12 of the Act.

According to the CBI investigation, Jayalalithaa received 89 demand drafts worth Rs two crore drawn on various banks in Tamil Nadu and purchased in the names of 57 people, as well Rs 15 lakh in cash, the CBI sources said.

The cash and demand drafts were credited to her savings bank account in Canara Bank, Chennai, and she disclosed these in income tax returns as gifts.

The CBI claimed Jayalalithaa had committed an offence under Section 11 of PCA by allegedly accepting the cash and drafts "as consideration from persons with whom she had official transactions or had transacted or would have transacted".

During the probe into the antecedents of the 57 people in whose name the drafts were purchased, the CBI found that 12 names were fictitious, while another dozen denied having any knowledge of the matter, they said.

The remaining 33, the CBI claimed, had accepted that they had purchased the drafts. Some of them had been absorbed in Jayalalithaa's ministry and others accommodated in lucrative posts in public sector undertakings and as chief executives of other companies, it alleged.

The case was initially registered in 1996 under PCA of 1988 on a complaint by the Director General (Investigations) of Income Tax that related to gifts allegedly received by Jayalalithaa, which she had disclosed in her income tax returns.

The matter was later transferred to the CBI, which registered a case in 1996 against Jayalalithaa under section 11 of the Act on the request of the state government.

Two others, who were ministers in her Cabinet then, were booked by the CBI for allegedly taking gratification other than their legal remunerations for an official act, the sources said.