Bengaluru court orders probe into molasses export case against ex- minister Gopalaiah

Bengaluru: In a setback to former Excise minister K Gopalaiah and others, a special court for cases involving MP/MLAs has rejected the B (closure) report and ordered a detailed investigation in the case pertaining to molasses export case.

Special judge Santhosh Gajanan Bhat has directed the Lokayukta police to submit its report within three months.

“Time and again it has been held by the Supreme Court and also by the High Court of Karnataka that the investigation does not mean a mere collection of materials and dumping the same before the Court. However, in matters pertaining to economic offences, the Investigating Agency is required to consider the same in a proper perspective,” the special court said.

The complaint was filed in 2023 by S Manjunath, Vice President of ‘Lanchamukta Karnataka Nirmana Vedike’. Apart from Goapalaiah, who was the Excise minister during the period 2022 to May 2023, the complaint had named J Ravishankar, IAS, Commissioner of Excise Department, Manjula Nataraj , Under Secretary of Finance Department, Dr Ekroop Kaur, IAS, Secretary, Finance Department and ISN Prasad, IAS, Additional Chief Secretary of Finance Department (all during the period 2021 to May 2023).

The complaint stated that K N Resources Pvt Ltd (the 6th accused in the complaint) had submitted an application on August 28, 2022, requesting permission to export two lakh MT of Molasses from the state to export from the port of Mormugao in Goa.

The complainant alleged that even though the company did not possess mandatory M2 licence for transportation and export of Molasses, the authorities accorded permission based on the Molasses Storage Report of the Month of May-2022 without obtaining the Storage Report for the month just prior to granting of the permission. Molasses, a thick dark brown juice, obtained from Sugarcane during the refining process, is regulated through Karnataka Prohibition Act.

The Lokayukta police filed the closure report by submitting that no ingredients are made out to continue with the investigation against the accused. The closure report said the allegations leveled against the accused are all false and baseless.

Moving a protest petition, the complainant stated that the investigation was conducted in a shoddy manner and lacked clarity. The court perused the closure report and observed that the investigating officer has not answered certain questions raised in the complaint.

“The economic offences are termed as white collar offences which bleed the economy of the nation itself. The Investigating Agency also pointed out various legal infirmities by holding that the provision of Section 120-B of IPC (criminal conspiracy) is not attracted. It would be appropriate to remind the Investigating Agency that there cannot be any direct evidence with respect to commission of offence under Section120-B of IPC. It is a cardinal principle of law that criminal conspiracy will always be hatched in darkness and committed in secrecy. Further, the Investigating Agency should have joined the leads which were available in the case to ascertain whether any offence was committed or not. It seems that the Investigating Agency without looking into the aforesaid aspects has straightaway come to a conclusion that there are no materials to hold that the accused persons have committed any offences,” the special court said.