Tuesday, March 22 2005 20:46 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: A Delhi court today (Mar 22, 2005) sentenced a man to three years' imprisonment for forgery, 19 years after he had sent a letter to the President enclosing a letter purportedly written by then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to a bank inspector to "manage" Rs 80 lakh for him.

Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Manoj Jain, who held Madhur Kishore Bhatnagar guilty of forging Rajiv Gandhi's letter, also imposed a fine of Rs 10,000 on him.

"The accused had intended to cause mammoth harm to the image and reputation of Rajiv Gandhi and to the office of the Prime Minister of India by his action," the court observed.

The CBI could "prove beyond doubt" that the accused, a State Bank of India agent, had "enacted" the high-profile corruption deal as he had a personal grudge and acted with a vengeance against D K Jain, SBI inspector in Vaishali, Bihar, who had cancelled his agency for misconduct, the court said.

In the letter issued on July 2, 1985 on a forged letterhead of the former Prime Minister, copies which the convict had also sent to editors of various newspapers, saying Rajiv Gandhi "asks" Jain to "manage" Rs 80 lakhs for him by "enacting" a bank robbery when there was enough sum in the bank.

"The contents of the letter were awful and dreadful and could have influenced the President to sack the Prime Minister if he believed its contents," the Court observed.