The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a plea by Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar challenging the High Court’s decision not to quash a disproportionate-assets case lodged against him by the Central Bureau of Investigation, Live Law reported.
A bench of Justices Bela M Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma said that it was not inclined to interfere with the High Court’s October order rejecting the senior Congress leader’s plea seeking to have the case dismissed.
The central agency had booked Shivakumar in 2020 for allegedly possessing disproportionate assets to the tune of Rs 74.93 crore. His assets had increased disproportionately between 2013 and 2018, the agency alleged.
In October 2020, the agency had raided 14 locations linked to Shivakumar.
The state government had allowed the central agency to investigate Shivakumar’s assets in 2019, when the Bharatiya Janata Party was in power in Karnataka.
In April 2023, the High Court had rejected Shivakumar’s petition challenging the state’s sanction to the Central Bureau of Investigation. This order was then challenged before a division bench that ordered an interim stay on the agency’s investigation, in June 2023.
The state’s subsequent Congress government, which came to power in May 2023, had meanwhile withdrawn its sanction to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, representing the Congress leader, told the Supreme Court on Monday that the bureau’s investigation had commenced without obtaining the required sanction under section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption Act, Live Law reported.
This section stipulates that no investigation can be conducted by a police officer into an offence alleged to have been committed by a public servant under the Act without prior approval from an appropriate authority.
Rohatgi told the court that the question of whether this section could be applied to offences allegedly committed before 2018 – the year in which the section was enforced – has been referred to a larger bench that is yet to pronounce its decision.
The advocate was referring to January’s split verdict in another case under the same that has been filed against Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu.
In response, the bench said that the case against Shivakumar could not be quashed on the basis of the split verdict, Live Law reported.
Rohatgi pointed out that his client was being investigated by the income tax authorities in connection with the same case.
“But you are also prosecuted under Prevention of Corruption Act,” the court responded. “Income Tax authorities can’t prosecute under PC [Prevention of Corruption Act] Act. We can’t interfere. Sorry.”
In August 2017, the income tax department had carried out raids at various locations connected to Shivakumar, reported Live Law. A case was then filed against him under provisions of the Income Tax Act.
The Enforcement Directorate in 2018 filed a case against him in the same matter, accusing him of tax evasion and being involved in alleged hawala transactions worth crores of rupees. The money-laundering case was quashed by the Supreme Court in March.
The Central Bureau of Investigation’s case was based on inputs that it had received from the Enforcement Directorate.
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