SC gives stay on Karnataka High Court's order of 3 months jail to SRS MD

The Supreme Court has provided interim relief to K T Rajashekar, the managing director of S R S Travel and Logistics by staying the Karnataka High Court's order, which directed for his three-month civil imprisonment and attachment of moveable properties for "wilful disobedience" of its order.

The HC had in its order on January 20, 2020 took a very stern view of him going ahead with digging up fuel tanks and other construction works on a land in Bengaluru, taken up on licence in 2008 by Rajashekar, who ran the travel service with yearly turn-over of Rs 700 crore, for bus shed, despite the status quo order.

A bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Aniruddha Bose, however, orally termed the HC's order to be "appropriate and correct".

The court, in its order on Friday, asked senior advocate Sajan Poovayya to take instructions if Rajashekar was willing to vacate the premises, measuring 4.18 acres of land, or not as the bench indicated to the parties that the court would like to "end the entire proceedings as a whole".

The court allowed M/s Narayan Swamy and sons represented by advocates Balaji Srinivasan and Ashok B Patil, to file their affidavit as they contended Rs 100 crores were dues were pending, since they had revoked the licence in 2013 after reconstitution of their partnership firm.

Rajashekar approached the top court challenging the validity of High Court's order of January 20, which had directed a seize on his moveable properties for one year.