After CBI clean chit, George seeks apology from Congress

NEW DELHI: With the CBI chargesheet giving a clean chit to former defence minister minister George Ferandes in the coffin scam, the JD(U) leader demanded an apology from Congress for alleging his involvement in the 2002 case. ���I needed no clean chit from the CBI to know that the aluminium casket purchase issue had never even come to my table during my tenure as defence minister let alone my drinking the blood of martyrs, as Congress accused me of doing,��� the JD(U) leader said in a press statement here.

The chargesheet was filed against then military attache in the Indian Embassy in the US, Major General (retd) Arun Roy, Col (retd) S K Malik, Col S D Singh and US based Victor Baiza of Buritrol and Baizarces, the vendor which supplied the casket.

The coffin scam, which rocked the nation during the Kargil war when body bags were used to bring back bodies of soldiers killed during the conflict, had come under the scanner of CAG, which had found lot of flaws in the procurement of caskets. The UPA government then referred a number of defence deals entered during the NDA regime to CBI on the basis of objections raised by the CAG.