TIL Desk/National/New Delhi/ The CBI today arrested former Indian Air Force chief S P Tyagi and two others for alleged corruption in the Rs 3,600 crore AgustaWestland VVIP choppers deal. Tyagi, who retired in 2007, was questioned by the CBI extensively in the past in this case.
Along with Tyagi, his cousin Sanjiv alias Julie Tyagi and lawyer Gautam Khaitan were also arrested. “This is for first time a former IAF chief has been arrested by the central probe agency,” official sources said.
On January 1, 2014, India had scrapped the contract with Finmeccanica’s British subsidiary AgustaWestland for supplying 12 AW-101 VVIP choppers to the IAF over alleged breach of contractual obligations and charges of paying kickbacks of Rs 423 crore by it for securing the deal. CBI had also got issued Letters Rogatory (judicial requests) to multiple countries to gather more leads and evidences in this case.
CBI sources said the bribe amount was routed through middlemen and relatives to exert influence over Tyagi. CBI alleged that in 2005, Tyagi had agreed to change the long held stand of the Indian Air Force that minimum operational ceiling of the VVIP helicopters should be 6000 metres. Tyagi allegedly influenced the decision to reduce it to 4500 metres which brought AgustaWestland into the running for the deal when its choppers were not even qualified for submission of bids, CBI sources said.
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