The State government on Wednesday gave an undertaking to the High Court of Karnataka that the police would neither precipitate the matter nor take any coercive action against Union Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy and others on the first information report (FIR) registered against them on November 4 for allegedly “threatening” a senior IPS officer.
Meanwhile, the court restrained the State and the prosecution from approaching the trial court, citing the registration of the present FIR, to seek cancellation of the anticipatory bail granted to Mr. Kumaraswamy way back in 2014 in a case related to alleged illegality in approving mining licence in favour of a mining company when he was serving as Chief Minister.
“If the application is already filed, then the prosecution is restrained from taking any further action on the application seeking cancellation of bail,” the court made it clear.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the interim order on a petition filed by Mr. Kumarawamy, his son, Nikhil Kumaraswamy, and JD(S) leader Suresh Babu.
While recording the undertaking given by Additional State Public Prosecutor Jagadeesh B.N. on behalf of the State, the court also reserved liberty to the petitioners to move the matter if any precipitative action is taken by the State contrary to these directions, while adjourning further hearing till December 5.
Earlier, appearing for the petitioners, Senior Advocate Hashmath Pasha had pointed out that the complaint was filed due to political reasons and the SIT, which is headed by the complainant Additional Director-General of Police (ADGP) himself, is now seeking cancellation of the bail granted to Mr. Kumaraswamy in the mining case citing the FIR registered based on the senior police officer’s complaint.
The petitioners questioned the legality of the registration of the FIR against them based on the permission granted by a special court of metropolitan magistrate to register the FIR for the non-cognisable offences against them based on the complaint lodged by M. Chandrashekar, ADGP, who is heading the Special Investigation Team (SIT) under the Karnataka Lokayukta probing certain illegal mining cases, which are not investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
Background
Mr. Kumaraswamy had on September 28 issued statements accusing Mr. Chandrashekar of allegedly indulging in corruption, illegal construction, creating fake medical documents to seek deputation to the Karnataka cadre from the Himachal Pradesh cadre, etc. Mr. Chandrashekar, acting on the State government’s tune, had also attempted to search Karnataka’s Raj Bhavan in the guise of an alleged leak of information related to the SIT’s request seeking sanction for his prosecution in the mining case, Mr. Kumaraswamy had claimed.
In response to these allegations, Mr. Chandrashekar initially issued a ‘note’ to the SIT’s staff stating that an accused [Mr. Kumaraswamy] is trying to “threaten” the SIT by making false allegations against him.
Later, Mr. Chandrashekar lodged a complaint with the police on October 11 against Mr. Kumaraswamy, Mr. Nikhil Kumaraswamy, and Mr. Babu. The police had initially registered this complaint as a non-cognisable offence report. After the magistrate court granted permission on October 30, the police registered the FIR on November 4 under Section 224 (threat of injury to any public servant for the purpose of inducing that public servant to do any act, or to forbear or delay to do any act) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.
Published - November 06, 2024 10:08 pm IST
