The Chief Justice of the High Court of Karnataka on Thursday set up a Special Bench of Justice C.R. Kumaraswamy to hear the appeals filed by AIADMK general-secretary Jayalalithaa and others, who have questioned their conviction in the disproportionate assets case.
The Special Bench has been set up based on the December 18, 2014 direction of the Supreme Court for hearing the appeals on a day-to-day basis, said a notification issued by the Registrar (Judicial).
The other appeals were filed by Ms. Jayalalithaa’s associates — V.K. Sasikala, V.N. Sudhakaran and J. Ilavarasi.
Though the appeals have been listed for hearing on Friday, they are likely to be heard regularly from January 5 as Justice Kumaraswamy will not be sitting on Friday. The appeals have been listed before another judge, who has been assigned to take up matters assigned for Justice Kumaraswamy in view of latter’s non-sitting on Friday.
A Special Court, on September 27, 2014, sentenced Ms. Jayalalithaa to four years’ imprisonment along with imposing Rs. 100-crore fine while declaring that the prosecution had established that she possessed assets worth Rs. 53.6 crore disproportionate to her known sources of income. While the other accused too were sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, they were imposed with fine of Rs.10 crore each. The Supreme Court on October 17, 2014 granted them bail on their appeal against the High Court of Karnataka’s October 7, 2014 verdict refusing to release them on bail during the pendency of their appeals.
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