A Delhi court on Monday dismissed an application of senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy seeking summoning of 10 types of documents from the Congress, 11 types of documents from Associated Journal Limited (AJL) and certain documents from the Income Tax Department in the National Herald case of cheating and misappropriation.
AJL is the publisher of the daily.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi, party vice-president Rahul Gandhi and four others are facing prosecution in the case on a complaint by Dr. Swamy.
The other accused in the case are Congress general secretary Oscar Fernandes, party’s treasurer Motilal Vora and the Gandhi family loyalists Suman Dubey and Sam Pitorda.
Dismissing the application, Metropolitan Magistrate Lovleen said: “... the prayer of the complainant is nothing but a fishing enquiry which is not permitted under the law. This court feels that by seeking the above documents the complainant seems to enlarge the scope of the present proceedings.”
“... the complainant has not even placed a list of witnesses, whom he proposes to examine at pre-charge stage. So, the prayer made by the complainant for summoning of the documents ... has to be rejected,” the Magistrate said.
Dr. Swamy, in his complaint, has alleged that the accused persons have fraudulently acquired AJL and transferred its assets worth crores of rupees to Young Indian , another company.
