Jayalalithaa case: Supreme Court rejects appointment of public prosecutor in DA case

In a major setback to AIADMK supreme J Jayalalithaa, the Supreme Court on Monday said that Tamil Nadu has no authority to appoint Special Public Prosecutor in the former CM"s disproportionate assets case, reports said.

“No fresh hearing in the case is required,” the Supreme Court said.

Noting that the appointment of Bhawani Singh as special public prosecutor SPP was “bad in law”, the top court said that it did not warrant de novo hearing. “We do not want to delay this matter any further. The appointment of SPP prima facie appears to be irregular and bad in law. But this doesn’t warrant fresh hearing. We are not going to allow de novo hearing,” a bench comprising Justice Dipak Misra, Justice R K Agrawal and Justice Prafulla C Pant said.

According to latest reports, the Supreme Court said that Karnataka had the power of being the sole prosecuting agency in the case and no fresh hearing is required in the case. The apex court also allowed DMK leader K Anbazhagan and Karnataka to file their written submission before the High Court latest by 28 April.

According to this report in NDTV, the judgment in the case will be delivered by 12 May.

Earlier, the Supreme Court which had reserved its judement noted that the appointment of the SPP prima facie appeared to suffer from irregularities but it will not allow the de novo hearing before the high court.

On 17 October, the apex court had granted conditional bail to Jayalalithaa who was sent to jail by a trial court on 27 September.

The 66-year-old Jayalalithaa, who had moved the Supreme Court for bail on 9 October  after being denied by the Karnataka High Court, had submitted that she had been sentenced to only four years jail and was suffering from various ailments as grounds for immediate relief.

The fresh hearing by the larger bench was completed in a little less than two days. The matter was referred to the larger bench on 15 April when a bench comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and R Banumathi had delivered a split verdict.

Jayalalithaa, her close aide Sasikala and two of her relatives were sentenced to four years of jail term for accumulating wealth disproportionate to known sources of income in an 18-year-old corruption case.

With agency inputs