SC to hear plea on reopening cases against BSY, DKS

apex court

The Supreme Court would take up on Tuesday a plea for reopening a corruption case related to land denotification in Bengaluru in 2010, during the earlier stint of B S Yediyurappa as chief minister, to provide undue benefit to senior Congress leader D K Shivakumar.

A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices B R Gavai and Surya Kant would consider the petition filed by advocate Prashant Bhushan on behalf of NGO Samaj Parivartan Samudaya.

A separate bench had in September permitted the petitioner NGO led by S R Hiremath to file a special leave petition against the Karnataka HC’s judgement of December 18, 2015.

The court had fixed the matter for consideration after advocate Bhushan mentioned it last month, saying it was surprising that the petition filed in September had not come up for consideration.

The court had then ordered, “List these matters on January 7, 2020, before the appropriate bench subject, to curing defects if any.”

Along with the special leave petition, an application for condonation for delay would also be taken up by the bench.

The NGO, through Hiremath, had earlier filed an intervention application which was strongly opposed by the counsel for Yeddyurappa and Shivakumar, saying a criminal case can’t be reopened at the instance of a third party. It maintained that since the case was pertaining to corruption and the prosecution by Lokayukta did not proceed, it had intervened in 2016 in the pending matter before the top court.

Hiremath then sought to recall the order of February 21, 2019, whereby the petition filed by Kabbalegowda was “dismissed as withdrawn” by mentioning the matter. Prior to it, first complainant T J Abraham had also withdrawn his petition.

The issue related to the denotification of 4.2 acres of land allegedly in contravention of the Karnataka Restriction of Transfer of Land Act, 1991 and in violation of the Prevention of Corruption Act and Indian Penal Code.

In a special leave petition, Kabbalegowda, a social worker from Ramanagar district, has challenged the Karnataka HC’s order of December 18, 2015, quashing the proceedings initiated against the leaders as well as Hamed Ali, the then sub-registrar at Bengaluru South Taluk, and others. The trial court had on February 5, 2012 taken cognisance of the offences allegedly committed by the accused.