CBI to SC: Emaar scam being probed from 2000
SC junks Emaar, Jagathi pleas against probe
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to intervene in the AP High Court’s separate orders directing CBI investigation into Jagathi Publications case and the Emaar-APIIC scam.
Crucially, the Central Bureau of Investigation submitted that its probe in the Emaar scam is covering all land allotments from the year 2000 onwards.
The statement of additional solicitor-general Harin Raval before a bench of
Justices Dalveer Bhandari and Dipak Misra — which disposed of five petitions on these issues — assumes significance as it means that the CBI had also gone into the Emaar land deals during Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu’s tenure as chief minister.
The bench declined to interfere in the HC order on the special leave petitions filed by Emaar MGF Land Pvt Limited (in the Emaar case) and Jagathi Publications, saying that the CBI had even filed a chargesheet in some aspects of these cases.
Therefore, there was no cause for any interference by the Supreme Court at this stage.
On the petition of Bheema Reddy Yella Reddy for extending the probe to the land allotments by the erstwhile TD government, headed by Mr Naidu, the top court pointed out that in view of the ASG’s statement that the CBI had already covered cases from 2000 onwards, there was no need for any further direction on the issue.
Sandur Power Company, against whom TD leader K. Yerrannaidu had filed a petition for a CBI probe in the High Court, had filed a special leave petition.
All these petitioners had sought interim stay on the HC order as immediate relief and quashing of the order as main prayer in their SLPs. They alleged that all the HC petitions were “politically motivated” as they were filed by political opponents of late chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, who were also “inimical” to Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy after he inherited the political legacy of his father.
The other ground for challenge was that the petitioners, Mr Yerrannaidu and Congress legislator P. Shankar Rao, who filed the PILs in the HC, could have filed complaints in the magistrate’s court as provided under the Code of Criminal Procedure and the court would have issued the due process only after enough “prima facie” material was brought on record.
But HC had ordered the CBI probe straightaway, without examining the evidence to show if any case even for “preliminary enquiry” was made out, which is the normal practice with the CBI.
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