Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa and three others accused in the disproportionate assets case, on Thursday withdrew their petitions from the Karnataka High Court in which they had sought a direction to the Special Court to consider their plea to “eschew the charge of abetment” before continuing final hearing of the case.
In their petition, they had questioned the August 20 order of the Special Court, which had decided to consider only at the time of final judgment their plea to “eschew the charge of abetment”, while refusing to go into the merits of the “charge of abetment” at this point when the charge was framed 17 years ago.
When the petitions came up for hearing before Justice Anand Byrareddy, the counsel for Ms. Jayalaalithaa and other accused submitted applications for withdrawing the petitions. It was pointed out in the applications that the “petitions have become infructuous” as the Special Court has subsequently concluded the trial and final argument of the case on August 28 and reserved its verdict. They had filed the petitions on August 22.
The High Court accepted the applications for withdrawing the petitions.
