Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Monday moved the Karnataka High Court seeking to implead herself in a petition by DMK General Secretary K. Anbazagan challenging the appointment of Special Public Prosecutor Bhavani Singh in the disproportionate assets case.
When her impleading petition came up for hearing, Justice H.S. Bopanna asked Mr. Anbazhagan to file his objections to it by Tuesday and posted the matter to August 28.
Mr. Anbazhagan had on August 23 challenged the recent appointment of the SPP to conduct the case pending against Ms. Jayalalithaa and others before the Special Court in Bangalore.
Mr. Anbazhagan’s counsel opposed Ms. Jayalalithaa’s plea stating that the accused “is nobody to say as to who should be the prosecutor and who should not be the prosecutor.”
The fact that the accused has come up with an application to support the cause of Mr. Singh would indicate that he was colluding with the accused, he charged.
In his petition, the DMK general secretary has sought the quashing of the state government’s notification appointing Singh as SPP contending it was contrary to the Supreme Court’s direction.
Mr. Anbazhagan, on whose plea the case was transferred from Tamil Nadu to Karnataka by the apex court in November 2003, had also alleged that Singh was not discharging his professional duties as SPP in terms in which he was required to do and that he had not chosen to cross-examine many important witnesses for one reason or the other.
He also stated that Mr. Singh had not pointed at certain inadmissible documents which were brought on record in the case as exhibits.
The DMK leader had further argued that the “improper” conduct of the SPP has raised a strong suspicion in his mind that people of Tamil Nadu may not get justice.
Ms. Jayalalithaa has been charged with accumulating Rs 66.65 crore wealth disproportionate to her known sources of income when she was Chief Minister for the first time from 1991 to 1996.
