Amar Singh aide Sanjeev Saxena arrested in cash-for-vote scandal of 2008

NEW DELHI: Sanjeev Saxena, a former aide of Amar Singh, has been arrested by the Delhi Police in connection with the cash-for-votes scandal of 2008.

The arrest follows strong criticism from the Supreme Court for the tardy investigations into the case. "Sanjeev Saxena was arrested from Delhi after his interrogation on Sunday," said Deputy Commissioner of Police Ashok Chand.

An apex court bench of Justice Aftab Alam and Justice RM Lodha had on Friday come down heavily on the Delhi Police after they filed a status report on investigations into the alleged cash-for-votes episode.

"We are wholly unsatisfied with the status report," the court had said. On July 22, 2008, three BJP members had flaunted wads of the Rs 1,000 notes in the Lok Sabha and alleged that the money was paid to them for securing their votes in the trust vote, after Left parties withdrew support to the UPA government over the India-US civilian nuclear deal.

The government, which directed the Delhi Police to investigate the case, did not take any step to establish the criminal culpability of those allegedly involved in the case. Air Chief Marshal S Krishnaswamy (retd) and Julio Ribeiro, former Commissioner of Police, had approached the SC seeking its intervention.

"The cash-forvote incident showed the desperate depths to which certain political functionaries and parties stooped to ensure victory on the floor of the House, and these exposures represent both a gross moral degeneration and crass political opportunism of the government and degraded and disgraced our sacrosanct traditions of parliamentary democracy," they had told the court.