Hearing of SMK's plea to continue today

The petition moved by Union Minister for External Affairs, S M Krishna, seeking the quashing of the private complaint the Lokayukta police registered against him will be heard again on Wednesday.

Krishna’s counsel, Uday Lalit, reiterated on Tuesday that “the Lokayukta report on illegal mining has made out no offence whatsoever against him”.

The said report forms the basis of the private complaint and the subsequent First Information Report (FIR) registered by the Lokayukta police against him on December 8, 2011. Krishna has been accused of facilitating illegal mining when he was the chief minister from October 1999 to May 2004. Lokayukta is a full-fledged authority endowed with sufficient powers and a private complaint can be made to the Lokayukta itself, Lalit maintained.

If the complainant discloses any criminality, the Lokayukta is authorised under Section 14 of the Karnataka Lokayukta Act, 1984, to initiate prosecution. “If there is no reference to my client even after three years of investigation (the preliminary report was submitted in 2008 and the final one in 2011), no observation against the conduct of my client and nothing has been attributed against him by way of assessment by the Lokayukta, there cannot be anything against my client in the complaint, which is purely based on the Loka­yukta report, and therefore there cannot be any investigation under Section 156 (3) of the CrPC on the matter,” he argued.

“He (Justice Hegde) has adopted a neutral stand and left it to the State Government to decide. In such circu­msta­nces, the probe order­ed by the Lokayukta Spe­c­ial Court into the matter almost amounts to investigating the Lokayukta report and even going beyond the report,” Lalit said. The complainant, T J Abraham, also made submissions before Justice Naraya­nappa Anand, but they rema­ined inconclusive.