BENGALURU: Granting a month's time to the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) to submit the report on the investigation into the FIR registered over alleged preferential treatment to VK Sasikala, aide of former TN CM J Jayalalithaa, while she was serving her sentence at the central prison at Bengaluru, the Karnataka High Court on Tuesday said the Secretary of the Home Department should be present before the court on October 8, the next date of hearing, if the ACB fails to meet the deadline as stipulated.
A division bench of Acting Chief Justice Satish Chandra Sharma and Justice Sachin Shankar Magadum passed the order during the hearing of a public interest litigation filed by social worker and educationist KS Gita (65) from Alwarpet in Chennai.
When the matter was taken up for hearing, it was submitted that two months time is required to submit the report before the jurisdictional court on the investigation, as the Director General of Police, ACB, forwarded the final report in July 2021 to the competent authority seeking sanction to proceed against four public servants.
Then the court noted that it fails to understand why two months time is required in the matter as all the offices are located in Bengaluru itself. The necessary orders for sanction can be obtained in a day if there is a will to do so. However, 30 days time is granted from today to do the needful, failing which the Secretary of the Home Department, the sanctioning authority, shall remain present on October 8, the court ordered.
The petitioner Gita had prayed to the court to issue directions to the authorities for a final report on the alleged corruption that led to Sasikala being granted favours when she was serving her sentence in a multi-crore corruption case.
She sought a detailed report on the findings submitted by retired IAS officer Vinay Kumar after the inquiry into the allegations of preferential treatment to Sasikala and her sister-in-law J Ilavarasi. She also claimed that no final report on the investigation done so far was submitted.
After this petition was filed, the state government informed the court that the ACB had registered an FIR in 2018 following the allegations.