JBT scam: HC asks Tihar to take officer to hospital

The Delhi high court on Wednesday asked Tihar jail authorities to take Vidya Dhar, sentenced to 10-year jail term along with former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala in teachers' recruitment scam, to the neuro-psychiatric hospital here on his plea for interim bail on medical grounds.

The Delhi high court on Wednesday asked Tihar jail authorities to take Vidya Dhar, sentenced to 10-year jail term along with former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala in teachers' recruitment scam, to the neuro-psychiatric hospital here on his plea for interim bail on medical grounds.

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Justice Siddharth Mridul asked the Tihar jail authorities "to produce him (Dhar) before the medical authorities of Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS) on Thursday".

The court also directed the IHBAS director to file a report after examining Dhar's mental conditions by July 2 and posted the matter for July 3.

The court's order came on the plea of Dhar, an IAS officer and former officer on special duty to Chautala, seeking interim bail plea on the ground that he had been suffering from dysthymia (neurotic depression) and his physical and mental conditions had deteriorated in jail.

Dhar's counsel argued that his client was suffering from hypertension along with other ailments. He said Dhar was also a chronic diabetic and the medical condition of appellant (Dhar) was not well.

Opposing the bail plea, the CBI counsel told the court that if the convict was suffering from any mental disorder, appropriate treatment could be given to him by the jail authorities and he should not be granted bail.

On January 22, the trial court had convicted and sentenced Chautala and nine others, including his son Ajay Chautala, to 10-year imprisonment for illegally recruiting 3,206 junior basic trained (JBT) teachers in 2000.

Besides the Chautalas, IAS officers Dhar and Sanjiv Kumar, the then director of primary education, were held guilty in the case.

Out of total 55 convicts, 44 had been sentenced to four years in jail and one was sentenced to five-year jail term.

All of them were held guilty of cheating, forgery, using fake documents as genuine, conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and for abusing their official position under the Prevention of Corruption Act.

Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) chief Om Prakash Chautala and some other convicts had been granted bail on medical grounds by the high court recently.

After father, son hospitalised too

New Delhi: Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) leader Ajay Chautala, who is serving 10-year jail term in Tihar prison, was on Wednesday admitted to a hospital here after he complained of uneasiness and fatigue.

Sunil Gupta, law officer of Tihar jail said the jail doctors found his blood pressure and palpitation high, following which he was taken to Deen Dayal Upadhaya Hospital on Wednesday afternoon.

"Chautala has been kept at the intensive care unit of the hospital," Gupta said.

Ajay, his father and former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala and eight others were sentenced to 10-year imprisonment by a Delhi court in January this year for corruption in a teachers' recruitment scam.

OP Chautala, 78, was granted interim bail for six weeks by the Delhi high court on May 21 for undergoing pacemaker implant surgery at a hospital here.