Shanti Bhushan CD not doctored: Reports

Forensic testing of the compact disc audio tape where former law minister Shanti Bhushan purportedly speaks of buying out a court judge has revealed that it was not tampered with, media reports said on Thursday.

Media offices in Delhi on Apr 15 had received a compact disc containing a taped conversation between Shanti Bhushan, expelled Samajwadi Party member Amar Singh and party chief Mulayam Singh.

In the tape, Bhushan, a senior advocate in the Supreme Court, allegedly suggested to the two influential politicians that a court judge can be bought out and his son Prashant can get the job done for Rs 4 crores.

Prashant Bhushan on Monday filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking criminal contempt action against Amar Singh for allegedly fabricating the CD from spliced conversations in an attempt to tarnish their reputation.

Amar Singh too filed a police complaint against the Bhushans for implicating him in the row, dubbed as the ?CD controversy?, alleging that it was the lawyer son-and-father who had distributed the audio tape.

So far both of the parties have firmly maintained that the CD was fabricated. Prashant Bhushan even claimed that forensic analysis showed clear signs of electronic editing in an attempt to tarnish him and his father, who were both part of the Jan Lokpal Bill drafting panel.

However, according to media reports on Thursday, an official who has seen the signed report from the government’s forensic lab said that it clearly stated that there was no tampering, splicing or interpolation.

Swami Agnivesh, a member of India Against Corruption (IAC) that spearheaded the Jan Lokpal Bill campaign, on Thursday was quoted as trashing the results from the forensic lab as ?absurd?.

The new revelation comes a day after Shanti Bhushan found himself embroiled in a new controversy over a land allotment issue in Uttar Pradesh.

Former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, also a member of the IAC whose campaign forced the setting up of the Jan Lokpal Bill panel, reacting to the spree of allegations said that there seemed to be a concerted effort to tarnish the joint committee.

The Jan Lokpal Bill drafting committee was formed only after the coalition government at the Centre was virtually blackmailed to do so by Gandhian social activist Anna Hazare?s 98-hour long hunger strike demanding a fresh drafting of the bill pushed back for 42 years.

The bill had seen stiff opposition from certain sections within the government and politicians possibly because it aims to give an ombudsman police-like powers to prosecute any minister, bureaucrat or judge independently.

In a letter written to Hazare on Wednesday, Sonia Gandhi, chief of the Congress party that heads the coalition government at the Centre, also said that she or her party did not back any ?smear campaign? and were firm on rooting out corruption.