The high court on Wednesday disposed of a PIL petition that sought a CBI investigation into the alleged voter ID scam during the 2018 assembly election involving RR Nagar legislator N Munirathna.
A division bench headed by Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka perused the report filed by the additional commissioner of police (east) which stated that further investigation is underway in the two cases registered over the scam.
In May 2018, FIRs were registered at the Jalahalli police station after a large number of voter ID cards were found at an apartment in Sharadamba Nagar under the RR Nagar assembly constituency.
The PIL petition was filed by N Anand Kumar and G Santhosh Kumar, both claiming to be BJP sympathisers.
Munirathna was with the Congress at the time but joined the BJP later and contested on the party symbol in the by-election last year, which he won.
The bench noted that while the CBI is unwilling to investigate the case, the report filed by the police suggests there is no material to transfer the probe. The court pointed out that the additional commissioner of police had found certain lacunae in the investigation, some of which have already been remedied while others will be addressed during further investigation.
The report noted that some of the witnesses, including the petitioners, did not cooperate in the investigation.
“There are several allegations made in the writ petition. We cannot take allegations made in the petition for its face value as essentially it appears to us that there may be a political rivalry between the petitioner and the 5th resp (Munirathna). The investigating officers will have to bear in mind the allegations made by the petitioners. However, the petitioners also will have to cooperate with the investigators,” the court said and directed the state police chief to nominate a senior officer to monitor the investigation.
(Published 20 January 2021, 19:21 IST)
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