ACB raids: Cash, documents worth crores seized
Bengaluru, October 05: Following complaints from people against two government officials on amassing illegal assets disproportionate to their known sources of income, the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) sleuths conducted raids on the house and offices of those two government officers in eight places simultaneously and recovered cash and documents of properties worth crores, on Friday.
On Friday morning, the ACB sleuths conducted raids on the houses and offices of Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board (KIADB) chief development officer T.R. Swamy and Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA) engineer N.S. Gowdaiah.
The ACB officials conducted raids on the Greens apartment at Malleshwara, houses of two relatives and KIADB office of T.R. Swamy. House of N.G. Gowdaiah, relatives houses, another house in Gubbi in Tumkur district and BDA office and recovered cash and records worth crores from them.
ACB officials shocked
More than 20 ACB officials raided on the houses and office of T.R. Swamy and found more than Rs 4.5 crore cash with the denomination of 2,000, 500 and 200. Apart from this, important records worth crores, three luxury cars including Rs 30 lakh worth car. The officials also found heaps of records and files at a parked Omni car in at Mantri Mall Green Apartment basement and the ACB officials suspected that he might have hid the records of illegal activities.
T.R. Swamy lives in 1405 number apartment, while his sister lives in 1504 number apartment. As the ACB officials found cash worth crores, they brought three currency counting machines to count the currency notes found in those apartments.
IGP visits
ACB IGP Chandrashekar visited the house of T.R. Swamy where ACB officials conducted raids and found cash and records worth crores. He said that the ACB is verifying on the allegation that Swamy had thrown a bag from his house during ACB raid.
Booty at Gowdaiah’s house
In the name of family members of Gowdaiah, he has two houses, 8 sites, 14 apartments, 3 kg gold, 10 kg silver, three cars, three bikes, Rs 75 lakh cash and Rs 30 lakh deposits in various banks. Apart from this, 4.5 kg gold ornaments found in the house of his father-in-law, said ACB official sources.
Heaps of currency notes?
In the name of T.R. Swamy’s family members and relatives, he has 8 houses, 10 sites, 10 acre of agriculture land, 1.6 kg gold, three cars, and Rs 4.52 crore cash was found during the raid.
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Umar Khalid seeks review of SC verdict denying him bail, prays for open-court hearing
New Delhi, Apr 13 (PTI): Student activist Umar Khalid has moved the Supreme Court seeking a review of a verdict that denied him bail while observing that there were reasonable grounds to believe the allegations levelled against him in connection with the conspiracy behind the 2020 Delhi riots.
A bench of Justices Aravind Kumar and N V Anjaria was requested by senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who appeared in the court for Khalid, to list the review petition in open court.
Sibal said the matter is coming up for consideration before the judges in chambers on April 16 and they have filed an application for an open-court hearing.
Justice Kumar said, "We will look into the papers. If required, we will call it."
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According to the Supreme Court's rules, review petitions are considered by judges who delivered a judgment or passed an order in chambers to remedy an apparent error or a resultant grave injustice that has been the consequence of a decision of the apex court. Parties seeking a review can request judges for an open-court hearing to rectify the grave injustice caused due to the decision under review.
On January 5, Besides Khalid, the top court had refused bail to Sharjeel Imam but granted it to five others, saying all the accused do not stand on the same footing.
Khalid and Imam, who have been incarcerated since 2020, can file fresh bail pleas after the examination of protected witnesses or after a year from the day the order was passed, the court had said, as it rejected their contention of a delay in the trial.
There was a prima-facie case against Khalid and Imam under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), the top court had said, noting that prosecution material suggests that they were involved in the "planning, mobilisation and strategic direction" of the riots.
While the two will remain in jail, activists Gulfisha Fatima, Meeran Haider, Shifa Ur Rehman, Mohammad Saleem Khan and Shadab Ahmad were given bail by the court, which had imposed 11 conditions and said any misuse of liberty would lead to cancellation of bail.
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The court had noted that the guarantee of liberty enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution is of foundational importance, but at the same time, the security of a community, the integrity of a trial process and the preservation of public order are equally legitimate constitutional concerns.
Khalid and Imam stand on qualitatively-different footing as compared to the other accused, the court had said.
The prosecution had prima facie disclosed "a central and formative role" and "involvement in the level of planning, mobilisation and strategic direction extending beyond episodic and localised acts", the bench had said.
The February 2020 riots in northeast Delhi broke out during protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC), leaving 53 people dead and more than 700 injured.
The Delhi Police had arrested a total of 18 people in the conspiracy case. Of them, 11 have got bail so far.
The apex court's January order had said a delay in the trial does not operate as a "trump card" that automatically displaces statutory safeguards.
"All the appellants do not stand on equal footing as regards culpability. The hierarchy of participation emerging from the prosecution's case requires the court to examine each application individually," it had said, adding that the roles attributed to them were different.
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"This court is satisfied that the prosecution material disclosed a prima-facie allegation against the appellants, Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam.... This stage of proceedings does not justify their enlargement on bail," the apex court had said.
It had cited section 43D(5) of the UAPA, which requires the court to deny bail if, on a perusal of a case diary or a chargesheet, it finds that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accusation against such a person is prima-facie true.
Imam was arrested on January 28, 2020, for speeches made during anti-CAA protests. He was later arrested in the larger conspiracy case in August 2020.
Khalid was arrested on September 13, 2020, on charges of delivering provocative speeches on February 24 and 25 when Donald Trump, in his first term as the president of the United States, had visited India.
Strongly opposing the bail pleas, the Delhi Police had then contended that the riots were not spontaneous but an orchestrated, pre-planned and well-designed attack on India's sovereignty.
All seven accused were booked under the stringent anti-terror UAPA and provisions of the Indian Penal Code for allegedly being the "masterminds" of the riots.
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