Apex court breather for Yeddyurappa

Declining to interfere with the High Court’s order, the Bench of Justices V S Sirpurkar and T S Thakur, however, directed for deciding the petitions filed by complainant advocate Sirajin Basha and others within six weeks.

“Why are you coming to this court? It is a stay order. Go to High Court and ask for vacation of stay,” the Bench said.

Senior advocate K K Venugopal, appearing for Basha, submitted before the Court that the order passed by the High Court was a “blatant violation of the law”.

“There is a bar as it has been settled that no court shall stay the proceedings initiated under the Prevention of Corruption Act,” he contended.

The court, however, remained unimpressed. “It (argument) is perfectly justified and go and argue before the High Court,” Justice Sirpurkar said. The petition filed by advocate Prashant Kumar on behalf of Basha had contended that the stay order passed by the single judge bench of the High Court on March 29 had stalled the trial of all the accused persons including the chief minister and his son-in-law Sohan Kumar against the basic tenets of law.

“It is established canon of criminal law that every accused person has to establish his case individually and there cannot be any blanket stay in favour of all the accused persons at the instance of one of the accused,” the petition had said. “There was no occasion for the High Court to stay the trial at the pre-summoning stage,” it added.