Court rejects DKS’ plea for increasing meeting time

A Delhi court on Monday rejected a plea by former minister and senior Congress leader D K Shivakumar to increase his daily meeting time for family, friends and counsel from current 30 minutes to one hour. He is in custodial remand of the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case till September 13.

Special judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar found no ground to enhance the time limit already granted to him. The court, however, allowed Shivakumar’s plea for meeting with his family members, friends and counsel without presence of an officer from the investigating team. It also permitted him to use own shaving kits.

Shivakumar sought a direction through his counsel Mayank Jain for more time than the 30 minutes allocated by the court for his daily meetings.

The court had on September 4 sent the Karnataka’s strongman into custodial interrogation of the Enforcement Directorate till September 13.

He was arrested a day before for his failure to give tenable response to alleged seizure of cash including Rs 8.56 crore from his apartment at Safdarjung here. It was alleged that he was evasive and non-cooperative in his questioning at its headquarters here in Delhi between August 30 and September 3.

Allowing custodial interrogation of Shivakumar, the court had then permitted him to take all his medicines, which were prescribed in view of his medical condition as per the records of the RML Hospital here, where he spent his night due to complications, including varying blood pressure.