Agencies/New Delhi
A senior spokesman of the ruling Congress Party resigned yesterday after a controversial tape allegedly featuring him having sex was leaked on the Internet. Congress MP and leading lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi said in a statement he was also quitting as head of a parliamentary committee on law and justice. The parliament has been gridlocked by a series of graft scandals embroiling the Congress-led government, and the video allegedly showed Singhvi having sex with a female colleague in his legal chambers. Singhvi, 53, said he had been forced to step down because of the controversy surrounding the “distorted CD” row, which he dismissed as “pure imagination, wishful thinking and sensationalism.” “I have done this only to prevent even the slightest possible parliamentary disruption regarding the purported CDs being circulated about me,” he said. The Delhi High Court earlier this month stopped TV channels from broadcasting the contents of the video, which had been circulated by Singhvi’s former driver who reportedly nursed a grudge against the politician. The driver admitted in court that the “camera was used illegally” and said the video had been “morphed in such a manner so as to deliberately show (Singhvi) in a bad light.” But the video was posted on YouTube and other websites, prompting a sharp reaction from the politician, who accused the media of uploading it despite the injunction against its broadcast. Announcing his decision to quit as chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on law and justice and as party spokesman through a detailed press statement, Singhvi said “canards and baseless allegations” were being spread about alleged inappropriate conversation in the CD.Singhvi said he had informed Congress president Sonia Gandhi about his decision “not to brief the press” and his resignation as chairperson of the standing committee. He accused sections of the print and visual media of spreading falsehoods about the contents of the CD and said there was no reference to any illegality, corrupt practice, or wrongdoing. “People inimically opposed to me, who have assiduously spent over 10 days hearing, seeing, amplifying and distilling the CD have found no vestige of any reference, not even remotely, to any illegality, corrupt practice, or wrongdoing. Specifically, some sections of the print and visual media are spreading a falsehood simply by repetition and hearsay that there is reference in the CD to the promise of any post. No one has heard any such reference in the CD. There is none simply because it does not exist. It is pure imagination, wishful thinking and sensationalism,” Singhvi said. He said the canard was spread simply to give the issue a public interest flavour.“Since otherwise the contents of the CD, assuming them to be true (which they certainly are not), would disclose only something private and consensual giving a cause of action only to aggrieved family members (who have stood completely by me) and to no one else.” “It is lamentable that such canards are being spread about a CD which has, in fact, been accepted thrice over to be fabricated and morphed. The driver’s disclosure statement to the police, his detailed written statement (ie; written pleading) in the high court and his oral statement recorded on oath physically in the presence of the judge, all explain how and why he created this fabrication,” Singhvi said. The Congress leader said a reputable media house, which was co-defendant in the suit also recorded a consent statement based on the statement of the author of the CD and a final permanent decree of injunction has been passed over five days ago. “It is noteworthy that the driver’s threatening and blackmailing SMSs sent to my phone (including therein references to a potential CD) had been recorded in the last week of March itself (later extracted by the police), followed by a detailed four-page police complaint filed as far back as 29/3/12, ie; a full 13 days before the alleged CDs first surfaced in the media,” Singhvi said. The leading lawyer said the CD raises no public interest issues but has evoked salacious private and prurient interest and demanded that privacy issues be respected. “Either the CD is morphed or it is not. In either event it raises no public interest issue, yet evokes salacious private and prurient interest and contumacious Internet violation of a flagrant kind. As a political or a professional class, instead of gleefully watching, promoting or participating in a person’s natural and understandable discomfiture, we must respect privacy issues,” he said.
A blot on legal profession, say lawyersThe Bar Council of Delhi yesterday said that a controversial CD surrounding lawyer and Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi has lowered the dignity of the legal profession. Singhvi maintains that the CD’s contents were fabricated and morphed. Rajiv Khosla, member of the Bar Council of Delhi and former president of the Delhi Bar Association, said: “Such incidents cause a great damage to the whole legal institution and cannot be taken as an isolated incident concerning only an individual.” The bar council will hold a meeting on this issue on May 1. “The lawyers of Delhi, therefore, are interested to get the truth unfolded so that it should be known to everyone as to why the driver of an advocate stoop so low to make a dirty CD,” said Khosla.