Amar Singh files FIR after being sued

Expelled Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Amar Singh on Monday filed a police complaint against Prashant Bhushan and his father after the advocate moved to the Supreme Court against him over the CD controversy, media reports said.

Both of parties have apparently hit out at each other for implicating the either in the leaked tape row.

A former Law minister and co-chairman of the Jan Lokpal Bill drafting committee, Shanti Bhushan, father of Prashant Bhushan, finds himself in the shadow of a controversy over a leaked audio tape where he purportedly talks about buying out a judge.

Media houses had on Friday anonymously received a compact disc, containing intercepted conversations allegedly between Bhushan, Singh and SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav.

The contents of the tape are yet to be corroborated but they allege that Bhushan suggests the two influential politicians that a court judge can be bribed and his son Prashant Bhushan, also a member of the Lokpak panel, can get the job done for Rs 4 crores.

Prashant Bhushan alleges that the doctored tape, possibly made up with spliced conversations featuring his father, was made public with involvement of Singh, media reports said. On Monday he filed a petition in the apex court seeking criminal contempt action against Singh.

Bhushan said that forensic analysis of tape had showed clear signs of electronic editing and he suspected a “very very ominous conspiracy with the blessings of many many powerful people including corporates and politicians” to undermine the Jan Lokpal Bill drafting panel.

Singh on the other hand alleges that the CD was distributed by the Bhushans.

Formed after a fast-unto-death by Gandhian social activist Anna Hazare, the unprecedented 10-member team, seeing equal participation of the government ministers and civil society activists, aims to draft a tough anti-graft bill pushed back for 42 years.

Meanwhile, Hazare on Monday wrote to Congress party president Sonia Gandhi over the ?smear campaign? launched against civil society members of the joint drafting committee and asked her to advise her “colleagues” not to try to derail the process of drafting of law.

In a two-page letter Hazare spoke out against Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh who has apparently been attacking his campaign citing facts that were factually wrong. He also criticised the covert attempt to ?smear the reputations? of the civil society members.

“…I am of the view that the people working for public must be subjected to public scrutiny, however, when blatantly false accusations are made, fabricated CDs are planted…one feels that the purpose is not an honest public scrutiny but to tarnish reputations,? he said.

Hazare also took on an Union Minister and a member of the panel without naming him (but believed to be referring to Kapil SIbal) for giving out misleading statements suggesting that the civil society had softened its stance over the bill.

Even as Hazare sent out the letter, asking the drafting process of the bill not be undermined, a group of advocates on Monday moved to the Supreme Court challenging the inclusion of the five civil society members in the panel appointed to draft the ombudsman bill.

A lawyer M L Sharma along with others filed a public interest litigation in the apex court, saying that the committee, which also contains five ministers, is constitutionally flawed as it includes people who were not members of the parliament, media reports said.