NEW DELHI, Dec 6: Federal detectives on Monday accused a former leader of the Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), a national political leader and a retired army general in a bribery case, investigators said.

The three were secretly video-taped allegedly accepting money from journalists posing as arms merchants in 2001, triggering a scandal that rocked the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which was then in power.

Then BJP chief Bangaru Laxman and Janata Dal (People's Party) supremo Jaya Jaitley were accused of corruption and criminal conspiracy by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is probing the bribes-for-arms scandal, according to investigators.

The CBI presented the accusations to a special court in New Delhi. George Fernandes, who was defence minister in the BJP-led coalition government, is the number two in Mr Jaitley's Janata Dal.

The CBI also accused retired major general S.P. Murgai and two of Mr Laxman's personal staff in the case, investigators said. India's new Congress government, which ousted the BJP from power in May elections, handed over the case to the CBI in October after dismantling a one-member commission set up by former government to look into it.

Reporters belonging to the news portal (www.tehelka.com) allegedly video-taped Laxman and others taking bribes to help them get fictitious military contracts. The tapes were broadcast on television networks in India, sparking an outcry and forcing then premier Atal Behari Vajpayee to sack Fernandes to cool tempers. -AFP