|HT|
A Delhi court on Friday awarded four years’ imprisonment to former Haryana chief minister Omprakash Chautala for amassing assets more than his income. Special judge Vikas Dhull also fined Chautala with ₹50 lakh and directed to seize four of his properties. On May 21, while convicting Chautala for acquiring disproportionate assets, the judge said that the former CM amassed wealth to the tune of 103 % to the known sources of his income.
The court also held that Chautala had failed to satisfactorily account for such disproportionality by proving his source of income or showing the means by which he acquired assets between 1993-2006.
The court had also said that it was conspicuous that the income of the accused from Financial Year 1992-1993 till the Financial Year 1998-1999, varied between ₹25,000 per year to ₹1,42,000 per year. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had lodged the case in 2005, and a charge sheet was filed on March 26, 2010, accusing Chautala of amassing assets worth ₹6.09 crore, much disproportionate to his legitimate income, between 1993 and 2006.
The special public prosecutor for CBI urged the court to give maximum punishment to the convict to send a wrong message to the society. The SPP also said that Chautala does not have clean antecedents and this is the second case of his conviction.In 2013, Chautala was convicted in the JBT teachers’ recruitment scam.
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