The Supreme Court has sought a report from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in two of the illegal mining cases where the accused have been discharged by a special CBI Court in Karnataka. Since one of the cases involves the mining baron and former Karnataka Minister Janardhan Reddy and his wife, the bench gave CBI one week’s time to respond whether the CBI had approached the concerned High Court to appeal against their discharge and if not, why.
The decision has come after the petitioner in the case, Samaj Parivartan Samuday throught counsel Prashant Bhushan informed that strangely, the investigating agency has not filed appeal against all accused before the Karnataka HC.
The bench of Justices Ranjan Gogoi, PC Pant and Navin Sinha said, “As the CBI is not represented and has not informed the court what is the current position with regard to the aforesaid two cases - RC 18(A)/ 2011/ CBI/ ACB/ BlR and RC 19(A)/ 2011/ CBI/ ACB/BlR, we direct it to file a report before this Court within seven days with regard to the status of the aforesaid two cases including the proceedings that may be pending before the High Court arising out of the discharge orders passed by the learned trial Court.”
The Court read an affidavit dated November 3, 2015 filed by the CBI in connection with the case where it was stated that the two cases had been registered by the CBI, Anti Corruption Bureau, Bangalore in respect of M/s Associated Mining Company and M/s Deccan Mining Syndicate and others.
The said cases were filed pursuant to the order of the apex court on September 23, 2011 after a Court-appointed Central Empowered Committee submitted glaring irregularities in the operation of the above two mining leases. The CBI affidavit informed the Court that as on November 3, 2015, the cases were pending for “hearing before charges” and that the accused had filed discharge applications which were stated to be pending.
At this point, Bhushan interjected and told the Court that all the accused had actually been discharged in January 2016 by the trial Court.
The Court noted the submission made by Bhushan and directed the agency to come prepared with a status report on the two cases. The matter will now be heard on August 9.
In the Associated Mining Company case, both Janardhan Reddy and his wife Aruna have been discharged. The CBI submitted a chargesheet in this case in 2012 alleging the firm to have caused a loss of Rs 480 crore to the exchequer due to illegal mining.
In the other case involving Deccan Mining Syndicate, the court in its September 23, 2011 order noted that the company was found to have illegally mined on the lease area allotted to Government entity National Mining Development Corporation. The CBI probed into the case and found that the loss caused was to the tune of Rs 1232 crore. In this case, along with the owner of the company, top bureaucrats in the state were also named as accused.