CHENNAI: Karnataka high court’s first notification of 2015, issued as per the orders of the apex court, has a huge political significance for Tamil Nadu.
Notification no.1/2015 has announced that Justice C R Kumaraswamy will be the one to hear appeals filed by former chief minister of Tamil Nadu J Jayalalithaa and three associates in the high court against their conviction for corruption. The cases have been listed for hearing starting Friday and will be heard on a “day-to-day basis”. Applications by DMK general secretary K Anbazhagan, to be impleaded as party to the appeal proceedings, are also set to be filed on Friday, said his counsel A Saravanan.
While Jayalalithaa and her associates will seek to disprove special judge John Michael D Cunha’s finding that assets worth Rs 53.6 crore were amassed illegally by them, Anbazhagan will seek enhancement of sentence from four years to the permissible maximum seven years under the Prevention of Corruption Act. Anbazhagan was instrumental in getting the case transferred out of Tamil Nadu in November 2003 when the Supreme Court upheld his petition saying an opposition played the role of a ‘watch dog’ of the government in power.
On Friday, though, the appeals will come up before Justice H Billiappa because Justice Kumaraswamy is currently on leave. The high court’s online cause list said: “Matters pertain to special bench of Justice Kumaraswamy, and posted before Justice Billiappa in view of non-sitting of Justice Kumaraswamy on January 2, 2015.”
In his notification, the registrar (judicial) of Karnataka HC said Justice Kumaraswamy was being named to constitute a special bench, as per the orders of the Supreme Court. The apex court had, on October 17, asked Karnataka HC to constitute a special bench to hear the Jayalalithaa team’s appeals against their conviction in the disproportionate assets case by the special court in Bengaluru on September 27. Additionally, it extended bail to Jayalalithaa, N Sasikalaa, J Ilavarasi and V N Sudhakaran till April 18, indicating that it would be the outer limit by which the appeal proceedings must come to an end in the high court.
The first round of the 18-year litigation on corruption charges and amassment of assets worth Rs 66.65 crore disproportionate to Jayalalithaa’s known sources of income, came to an end on September 27 when special judge John Michael Cunha found her guilty of illegally amassing assets worth Rs 53.6 crore (he accepted the defence team’s explanation for the remaining Rs 13 crore) and sentenced her to four years imprisonment, besides a fine of Rs 100 crore. Her three associates too were found guilty and sentenced to four-year jail term each. They were imposed Rs 10 crore each as fine.
After vacation benches of Karnataka HC, and then a regular bench of the court on October 7 refused to suspend the sentence and release the four on bail, the Supreme Court came to their rescue and granted bail on October 17. It directed Jayalalithaa’s counsel to file relevant appeal documents before the high court by December 18. On December 18, the apex court extended their bail till April 18, and asked the HC to hear the case on daily basis. Citing “peculiar circumstances”, it asked the high court to hear all four criminal appeals on a day-to-day basis and pronounce the judgment in three months.
TOI | Jan 2, 2015
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