The High Court of Karnataka on Thursday rejected the petition by Deputy Chief Minister and state Congress chief D K Shivakumar challenging the Central Bureau of Investigation’s FIR against him in the disproportionate assets case. Justice K Natarajan, who concluded the hearing and reserved the judgment earlier, announced the verdict on Thursday.
The HC also directed the CBI to conclude the investigation and file the report within three months. Justice Natarajan reasoned that since the CBI has concluded most of the investigation, the court would not interfere in it at this juncture.
The CBI is at the stage of filing a charge sheet after completing gathering statements from the accused. While the operative portion of the judgment rejecting Shivakumar’s petition was dictated, the complete judgment copy is awaited.
The CBI has alleged that Shivakumar amassed assets disproportionate to his known sources of income between 2013 and 2018. He was a minister in the previous Congress government during this period. The FIR was filed by the CBI on September 3, 2020. Shivakumar challenged the FIR in the high court in 2021.
The Income Tax Department had conducted a search and seizure operation in the offices and residence of Shivakumar in 2017, based on which the Enforcement Directorate (ED) started its own probe against him.
Based on the ED investigation, the CBI sought sanction from the state government to file an FIR against him. The sanction was granted by the state government on September 25, 2019 and the FIR was filed a year later. Shivakumar had challenged the sanction granted by the state in a separate petition which was dismissed by the high court earlier.
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