SC gives a go-ahead for criminal prosecution of Chautalas

New Delhi, Jul 4 (PTI) The Supreme Court of India
Monday gave its nod for criminal prosecution of Indian
National Lok Dal leaders Ajay and Abhay Chautala in a
disproportionate assets case.
A division bench of V S Sirpurkar and T S Thakur
dismissed their plea of quashing the criminal case against
them on the ground that no sanction was taken from authorities
before initiating proceedings against them.
The bench said that there was no need to get
sanction before their criminal prosecution and vacated the
stay on the proceedings.
Refusing to grant any relief to Chautalas, the bench
upheld the Delhi High Court order for their prosecution.
The Supreme Court had on October 22 last year stayed
all further proceedings in the DA case against Ajay and Abhay
Chautala, sons of former Chief Minister of north Indian state
Haryana and INLD leader Om Prakash Chautala.
The Chautalas had challenged a trial court order
summoning them in the disproportionate assets case filed by
the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India's premier
investigation agency.
They had submitted that the CBI, which filed the
charge sheet, has failed to obtain the mandatory sanction from
the Government before launching the prosecution and alleged
that the entire probe against them was politically motivated.
They claimed that prior sanction was necessary to
prosecute the MLAs as provided under Section 197 CrPC but the
CBI had failed to obtain the same as the brothers were MLAs
when the offence was allegedly committed.
The Delhi High Court had earlier on July 8 dismissed
Chautalas' petition challenging the trial court's order.
The Chautala brothers, INLD MLA in Haryana, challenged
the February two order of the trial court which had taken
cognisance of charges against them in a disproportionate
assets case.
The CBI had filed a charge sheet in December last year
against the brothers in which it claimed that they had
accumulated massive wealth which was disproportionate to their
known sources of income.
According to the charge sheet against Ajay, the CBI
claimed that he was in possession of assets to the tune of Rs
27.74 crore --more than three times his income of Rs 8.17
crore during the period of 1993 to 2006.
The second charge sheet was filed against Abhay
alleging his assets were over five times his income of Rs
22.89 crore as per income tax records during the 2000-2005
period. The agency claimed to have found Rs 119.69 crore worth
of assets.
The investigating agency's FIR listed the movable and
immovable properties belonging to Chautala or his family
members which had been acquired between July 1999 and March
2005 when they were public servants.