SC dismisses Karan Johar's plea

Bollywood director asked to appear before UP court in anthem case

A bench of Justices, Sudarshan Reddy and J M Panchal, directed Johar to appear before the trial court in Uttar Pradesh where the complaint has been  pending for the past 7 years.

Earlier, the apex court had told the film director that he ought to have appeared before the trial court judge in Lucknow who had issued summons to him in the case. The complaint was filed in 2002 under the Prevention of Insult to the National Honour Act, 1971 for allegedly not playing the national anthem in the desired manner in the movie.
The Allahabad High Court had earlier dismissed Johar’s plea for quashing of the case, after which he had approached the apex court seeking relief.

Stamp scam

Meanwhile, a petition was filed on Monday before the Supreme Court seeking direction to the CBI to procure the laptop of fake stamp paper scam convict Abdul Karim Telgi from the Hyderabad forensic laboratory and probe its various incriminating information against several top politicians of Maharashtra. Delhi-based advocate Ajay Kumar Agrawal, on whose PIL in 2004 the apex court had ordered the CBI probe into the circulation of fake stamp papers and securities instruments, has now sought further investigation into the scam.

“Later on, SIT handed over the investigation to the CBI as per the honourable Supreme Court’s order dated 15.3.2004, but the CBI did not bother to investigate the content of the printouts from the laptop taken earlier...” the petition said.

Agrawal pointed out to the apex court that before the case was transferred to the CBI in July 2004, it was being investigated by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of the Maharashtra Police, which had seized Telgi’s laptop in July 2003 during a raid at his residence in Colaba, Mumbai. The laptop was subsequently sent to the Hyderabad forensic laboratory for examination of its contents and entries made in it.

He added that later during proceedings in a particular Mumbai trial court, the SIT had produced a printout taken from that laptop and sent it to the forensic laboratory.