The High Court of Karnataka on Friday rejected a plea by the former Minister Katta Subramanya Naidu and his son for quashing a second First Information Report (FIR) against them in the multi-crore ITASCA-KIADB land scam as was quashed with regard to another accused person in the case.
Justice A.V. Chandrashekara passed the order while dismissing a memo filed by Mr. Naidu and his son, Katta Jagadish.
Mr. Naidu and his son, who are accused number 1 and 2 respectively, had in 2013 filed petitions before the High Court against the order of the special court for Lokayukta cases that had refused to discharge them from case (numbered as Spl CC. 135/2011) arisen out of a fresh FIR (No. 57/2010), registered some time later after original FIRs were booked against them. Recently, another single judge of the High Court had quashed the FIR (No. 57/2010), in so far as it related to accused number 3, S.V. Srinivas, who was the Managing Director of ITASCA Software Development Pvt. Ltd, for the reason that second FIR on same set of offences based on new material is bad in law.
Verdict in another case
Following the verdict in Srinivas’s case, the father-son duo filed a memo requesting the High Court to quash the FIR (No. 57/2010) as was done in Srinivas’s petition.
However, Justice Chandrashekara said that in the light of a serious allegation being made in regard to hatching of conspiracy by all other accused, involvement of many officials of KIADB, and persons having no sufficient financial capacity pumping money to accused number 3, parity cannot be made applicable to the case of the petitioners.
The court also found force in the submission of the counsel for Lokayukta police that whether the FIR against Srinivas was quashed based on the legal grounds or on the facts was unclear, and hence can’t be applied to the petitioners. Their petitions, pending for adjudication, will now be heard on June 30.
The plea was for quashing a second FIR against them
in the multi-crore land scam
