On Monday, Former Indian Air Force Chief SP Tyagi was gratned bail by a court. He is the accused of receiving and facilitating bribes in a Rs 3,727-crore deal aimed at buying AgustaWestland choppers for ferrying government dignitaries.
Arvind Kumar who is the CBI, allowed the bail application of Tyagi and asked him to furnish a personal bond of Rs 2 lakh and surety of like amount. The court will hear the bail plea on 4th January 2016 of the other two accused – Sanjeev Tyagi, Lawyer Gautam Khaitan who the cousin of SP Tyagi.
The CBI had named 13 people in an FIR filed in the month of March 2013 including the former air force chief; his cousins Sanjeev alias Julie, Rajeev alias Docsa and Sandeep; three alleged middlemen Carlo Gerosa, Christian Michel and Guido Haschke; former Union minister Santosh Bagrodia’s brother Satish Bagrodia; IDS Infotech managing director Partap Aggarwal; Aeromatrix CEO Praveen Bakshi; former Finmeccanica chairman Giuseppe Orsi; former AgustaWestland CEO Bruno Spagnolini; and IDS Infotech legal advisor Gautam Khaitan as the accused in the case.
Six companies – Italy based Finmeccanica, its UK-based subsidiary AgustaWestland, Mohali-based IDS Infotech, Chandigarh-based Aeromatrix, IDS Tunisia and IDS Mauritius – also figured in the report.
Investigations came in action after an Italian court of appeals pointed fingers at 71-year-old Tyagi in April 2016, observing that there were “unmistakable indications of corruption” by an Indian officer. The VVIP chopper case also led to several disruptions in Parliament. The matter was taken up in both the houses this May.
Defence minister Manohar Parrikar had said in the Lok Sabha that some members of the UPA government were the real beneficiaries, while Tyagi only received “chillar” – or small change – from the scam
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