The Karnataka High Court on Friday reserved its judgement for May 28 on the plea filed by DGP, S M Bidari seeking his reinstatement as the Inspector General and Director General of Police, Karnataka.
A Division Bench, comprising Justice N Kumar and Justice H S Kempanna, reserved the verdict on the petition after conclusion of arguments by both sides.
Earlier, senior counsel representing Mr. Bidari, S N Chandrashekhar filed a memo seeking permission to withdraw the Interlocutory Application (IA) filed by him praying for referring the matter to a different bench subsequent to the assurance by the bench that it would review the case as per Supreme Court directions and go “only by facts of the case”.
The memo was then taken on record and the IA filed by Mr. Bidari and that filed by the respondent, present IGP and DGP A R Infant praying for contempt proceedings against his predecessor, were accordingly dismissed.
Making his submissions on behalf of the State as it had filed a similar connected writ plea, Advocate General S Vijay Shankar stated that Mr. Bidari has nowhere been indicted in the report submitted by the National Human Rights Commission probing the alleged atrocities of the STF headed by him during operations to nab sandalwood smuggler Veerappan.
Since Mr. Bidari was not indicted, the Advocate General submitted that the document was not considered relevant and not sent to the Union Public Service Commission for empanelment.
“The documents are not relevant and their non inclusion in the dossier (sent by the State government to the UPSC), does not vitiate the empanelment”, Mr. Vijay Shankar contended.
Keywords: Karnataka, S. M. Bidari, DGP appointment, CAT, High Court, Supreme Court, STF atrocities
