The Hindu : CBI gets more time on Swamy's petition

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 08, 2003

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CBI gets more time on Swamy's petition

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI APRIL. 7. The Delhi High Court today gave three more months to the CBI to examine whether there was any merit in the two public interest litigation (PIL) petitions filed by the Janata Party president, Subramaniam Swamy, against the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, and her son, Rahul.

A Division Bench, comprising Justice B.C. Patel and Justice B.D. Ahmed, allowed a request by the Additional Solicitor-General, Raju Ramachandran, for more time to wrap up the examination of the complaints.

The court recorded Mr. Ramachandran's statement for the CBI that the agency would examine the complaints and report back to the court on whether it had enough material to proceed or any offence had been revealed.

While one PIL alleged the involvement of Ms. Gandhi, her mother and sister in a smuggling racket in which precious antiques worth Rs. 10,000 crores were smuggled into Italy between 1991-94, the other accused Rahul of receiving pecuniary benefits from the erstwhile Soviet Union's intelligence agency, the KGB.

Dr. Swamy had urged the court to order as well as monitor investigation into the allegations as Ms. Gandhi, being the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and the main Opposition party, had so far been successful in "scuttling" investigation into the complaints.

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