The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a plea by Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar to quash a First Information Report (FIR) registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation accusing him of corruption linked to a disproportionate assets case.
Appearing before a Bench of Justices Bela M. Trivedi and SC Sharma, senior advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Vipin Sanghi, for Mr. Shivakumar, said the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) case was ”completely illegal”.
Justice Trivedi reminded Mr. Rohatgi that the charges were serious and involved offences under the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act.
Mr. Rohatgi argued that Section 17A of the PC Act was not complied with by the central probe agency.
The provision mandated that “no enquiry or inquiry or investigation shall be conducted by a police officer into any offence alleged to have been committed by a public servant under the PC Act without prior approval from appropriate authority”.
“Section 17A puts an embargo on enquiry or investigation into an FIR unless the required sanction is taken,” Mr. Rohatgi submitted.
Justice Trivedi was not impressed, saying the case cannot be quashed. The judge pointed out that ₹ 41 lakh was recovered from Mr. Shivakumar’s premises during Income Tax raids.
Mr. Rohatgi said the CBI cannot start a simultaneous investigation on the same issue the Income Tax department was already probing.
Justice Trivedi said these were two different investigations, dismissing Mr. Shivakumar’s contentions to quash the CBI case.
The Karnataka High Court had in October last year had similarly refused to quash the CBI case registered in 2020.
The Income Tax Department had raided Mr. Shivakumar in 2017. Subsequently, the Directorate of Enforcement Directorate (ED) had started its own probe.
Following the ED investigation, the CBI had sought sanction from the State government to register an FIR against him.
The sanction came on September 25, 2019. On October 3, 2020, Mr. Shivakumar was booked by the CBI under the Prevention of Corruption Act for the alleged possession of disproportionate assets to the tune of ₹74.93 crore.
