Mumbai: In a major breather to the family members of Congress leader Kripashankar Singh, a special court on Tuesday discharged them from a disproportionate assets case. This comes nearly three months after the former state home minister – Singh was discharged by the court in the same case.
Special Judge D K Gudadhe discharged Kripashankar’s wife – Matlidevi, Narendramohan (son), Sunita (daughter) and Vijaykumar (son-in-law) on Tuesday. The same court had discharge Kripashankar Singh in February this year on the ground that there was no prior sanction to prosecute the former Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA). It may be noted that to prosecute a MLA, the prosecuting agency is under obligation to obtain sanction from the Assembly speaker.
In this case, the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB), which had booked and chargesheeted the entire Singh family, had failed to obtain a sanction twice in 2014. “The court while discharging Singh had considered the fact that the ACB had suppressed the sanction part from the Speaker. The agency did not inform the court of this fact and instead filed its chargesheet, which is against the settled law,” said advocate K H Giri, who represents the Singh family.
According to Giri, since Singh was discharged from the case already, then there was no point in prosecuting his family. “My client Singh was arraigned as the main accused in the case. As against his family members, there was no independent charge since they were chargesheeted only because they were related to Singh. Since Singh was discharged, the court found no requirement to keep the case pending against his family,” Giri said.
In his orders, special Judge Gudadhe also considered the fact that the family members of Singh were not public servants and so they cannot be booked under the PC Act. The Singh family was booked by the ACB way back in 2014 in pursuance to a complaint filed by an activist, who had also petitioned the Bombay High Court seeking directions for an independent enquiry. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had also conducted a probe against the Singh family but had later on given them a clean chit.