The Delhi High Court today asked INLD chief O P Chautala, serving a ten-year jail term in a teachers recruitment scam case, to substantiate his claim of seeking two-month parole to look after his ailing wife by producing her recent medical records.
Justice Mukta Gupta asked the counsel for Chautala to place on record the medical details of the politician’s wife including diagnosis of her ailment and the treatment which she is said to be availing at a private hospital at Sirsa.
Senior advocate Sudhir Nandrajog and advocate Amit Sahni, appearing for former Haryana Chief Minister Chautala, said that the convict’s wife Sneh Lata is critically ill and is hospitalised at Sirsa in Haryana. The counsel submitted that the woman is in the intensive care unit (ICU) in the hospital.
The court listed the matter for further hearing on December 21.
The 82-year-old politician has said that he wanted to spend time with his wife “in her last days”.
The plea has said the leader was last granted parole earlier this year and he was entitled to get parole as per parole and furlough guidelines, which stipulate that a minimum of six months should elapse after the date of termination of the previous parole.
The high court had on March 1 cancelled the parole granted to Chautala on medical grounds and asked him to “surrender forthwith”, saying he cocked a snook at the court and “misled” it by feigning illness. It had then said that Chautala was misusing his parole to attend public meetings.
Chautala, his son Ajay Chautala and three others are serving 10-year jail term in the case.
The Supreme Court in August 2015 had dismissed Chautalas’ appeals against the high court verdict upholding their conviction and sentence of 10 years awarded by a trial court in the junior basic trained teachers recruitment scam case.
The father-son duo and 53 others, including two IAS officers, were among 55 persons convicted on January 16, 2013 by the trial court for illegally recruiting 3,206 JBT teachers in Haryana in 2000.
( Source – PTI )
