Supreme Court rejects PUC paper leakage case kingpin's bail plea

The Supreme Court has dismissed bail plea made by the alleged kingpin of the 2016 PUC paper leakage case.

A bench of Chief Justice S A Bobde and Justices A S Bopanna and V Ramasubramanian rejected the petition filed by Kumaraswamy against the Karnataka High Court's judgement of September 11, 2020, declining him the relief.

Senior advocate Shashikiran Shetty, appearing for the petitioner, questioned validity of the High Court' order. Among other grounds, he claimed out of 18 accused, 17 had already been released on bail and the trial in the matter had not made any substantial progress.

The High Court had declined to grant him bail, after noting some of the co-accused who were released, had either remained absent or absconded in trial court proceedings.

It had also noted the accused-petitioner was a kingpin, who entered the strong room of sub-treasury at Hanagal to take photographs of question papers, so he could not be granted any parity with other accused.

A case was lodged on March 21, 2016 invoking provisions of the Indian Penal Code, the Karnataka Education Act and stringent, Karnataka Control of Organised Crime Act on a complaint on leakage of Chemistry paper.

The petitioner was arrested on April 17, 2016 for alleged circulation of the leaked question paper for money.