Tehelka: George fires from jawans’ shoulder

‘‘Their motives were against the defence ministry and the defence minister with objectives which needed to be probed. Their mala fide intentions were very clear,’’ he said during the course of his cross-examination by Tehelka counsel Siddharth Luthra.

Questioning Tehelka’s motives, he said, ‘‘If they had information of any such corruption in the ministry, they should have approached me. But no, they had assumed that the defence minister was corrupt.’’ Fernandes said the portal could have approached the prime minister and if they did not have faith in even him, they could have gone to the Supreme Commander of the armed forces (the President).

Fernandes, who quit as defence minister after the expose and was re-inducted within months, arrived for the deposition at Vigyan Bhavan, assisted by a battery of lawyers headed Fali Nariman. His deposition lasted nearly 90 minutes.

When he was asked about former Samata Party president Jaya Jaitly assuring Tehelka reporters, who had posed as arms dealers, that she would put in a word to the Defence Minister, Fernandes denied that Jaitly had done any such thing.

‘‘Jaitly is one of the finest political activists in the country at present. I have known her for the last 25 years. She is a person of great distinction. We are proud of it,’’ he said.

Maintaining that rooms ‘‘as such’’ were not given to Samata Party at his official residence, Fernandes said, that in case of smaller political

parties, the residence of the leader was also used as a party office.

He said Jaitly as party president and some secretaries were using his official residence as office.

On former Samata party treasurer R K Jain, Fernandes admitted that he had appointed Jain as party treasurer sometime in 1997-98 but said he did not recollect how he was introduced to him. ‘‘One conman met another conman,’’ was his reply to a question on claims made by Jain to Tehelka.

Fernandes said Jain ceased to be the party treasurer after the annual conference of the Samata Party and before the expose was made public in March 2001.

He said neither did he know nor was there any animosity with Tehelka managing editor Tarun Tejpal and reporters Anirudh Bahal and Mathew Samuel.

Recalling events on the day of the expose, Fernandes said he was doing roster duty in Parliament when he got a note from his office saying ‘‘something serious has happened, please come to South Block at once.’’

‘‘After reaching office, I saw that there were two tapes and some documents. And the tapes, which I viewed, were dark but there was some head movement and what got my attention immediately was the title at the bottom of the picture saying…the Defence Minister was beyond redemption.’’

‘‘I went through the documents. The same day there was a Cabinet meeting and Prime Minister wanted to know, my cabinet colleagues wanted to know what exactly it was. I had to brief the Cabinet…the whole thing (tapes and documents) was sham,’’ Fernandes told the Commission.