Delhi court acquits Jagdish Tytler, Abhishek Verma in Chinese Visa Scam

A Delhi court on Tuesday acquitted former Congress lawmaker Jagdish Tytler and businessman Abhishek Verma in a cheating and forgery case arising from a 2009 forged letter that was used for assuring visa extension to Chinese telecom officials.

Judge Kaveri Baweja of Rouse Avenue court acquitted the duo.

The prosecution case was that in 2012, the accused persons had forged a letter on the letterhead of then Union Minister Ajay Maken. 

This forged letter was addressed to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to create an impression that visa rules for Chinese officials were in the process of being relaxed.

This was necessitated due to the guidelines issued by India's Ministry of Home Affairs (Foreigner Division) in 2009 regarding extension of visas to foreign nationals. As per the same, all foreign nationals who were in India on business visa were asked to leave the country on the expiry of their existing visas or by October 2009.

In order to circumvent this Government directive, the officials of a Chinese telecom company approached Verma.

It was alleged that the forged letter was used by Verma and Tyler to convince the Chinese telecom officials that the visa situation was being sorted out with the Central government. It was further alleged that the forged letter was also used to obtain illegal gratification from the Chinese officials. 

Ajay Maken filed a complaint regarding the forgery and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered a case to investigate the same.

The Delhi court framed charges under Sections 420 (cheating), 471 (fraudulently or dishonestly using as genuine any forged document or electronic record) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and also under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.