Jayalalithaa appeal: HC cited wrong order leading to acquittal

Bengaluru, June 24: The appeal filed by the Karnataka government challenging the acquittal of J Jayalalithaa and four others will come up in the month of July before a three judge bench likely to be headed by Chief Justice H L Dattu.

While Karnataka has made several points in the appeal challenging the verdict of acquittal by the High Court, it has stated that certain citations of the Supreme Court cannot be applied in this case.

The Karnataka High Court had cited the Agnihotri case on the basis of which it acquitted Jayalalithaa.

In the Agnihotri case, the Supreme Court had stated that an offence cannot be made out if the disproportionate income was less than 10 per cent. However Karnataka states that this case cannot be applied in the Jayalalithaa verdict.

Money amounted to crores of rupees:

In the Agnihotri case the Supreme Court had found that the disproportionate income was amounting to Rs 11350. This was considered to be a small amount and hence the accused were acquitted.

It was stated that the quantum of disproportionate assets was too small and negligible and hence the accused got the benefit of the doubt while being acquitted.

The appeal by Karnataka states that the same case cannot be applied in the Jayalalithaa appeal.

The High Court did not take into account that the disproportionate income in the Jayalalithaa case ran into several crores of rupees unlike the Agnihotri case where a benefit was given for a small sum of Rs 11,350.

The High Court has ignored the settled principles of law and has not gone into aspects such as conspiracy and abetments involving Jayalalithaa, Sasikala Natrajan, Ilavarasi and Sudhakaran.

Perversity of justice:

The appeal constantly notes that Karnataka being the prosecuting agency was not given an opportunity to argue the case. Conclusions were reached by the High Court without affording the prosecuting agency an opportunity to argue the case.

The conclusions that have been reached by the High Court borders of perversity of justice the appeal further states.

The judge ought to have given the prosecuting agency an opportunity. Further the appeal also questions the accused persons and states that they had never impleaded the Karnataka government in any of the proceedings.

Instead of curing this defect the High Court judge went an extra mile and reduced Karnataka to a non-entity in the appeal proceedings in the High Court.

The appeal also states that the entire appeal was heard in the high Court without a valid public prosecutor being appointed.

The High Court appears to have taken a pre-conceived notion while delivering the verdict. The judge made a mistake while holding that the loans of the nationalized banks had not been taken into consideration by the prosecuting agency.

In fact the agency had taken this into consideration, the appeal states. The High Court judge has failed in his duties as an appellate judge and his verdict was was vitiated for his erroneous approach and failure to consider material evidence on record.

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