BENGALURU: The state government made a submission to the High Court that the government had issued an order to re-introduce the use of Rs.1 revenue stamps.
A division bench comprising Chief Justice D H Waghela and Justice Ram Mohan Reddy disposed of the petition which said that the state government had issued the order on December 31, 2014.
The petitioner, Vijaykumar Sarj S Desai, a resident of Gadag, contended that after revenue stamps were banned in 2008 following the multi-crore scam by Abdul Karim Telgi in 2003, a black market had been created for revenue stamps.
He further added that the ban was ineffective and that revenue stamps were brought from other states and sold.
The bench disposed of the petition after the submission by the government.
FIR Quashed
The High Court on Tuesday quashed an FIR filed against chief executive officers (CEOs) of various mobile service providers in Karnataka circle in connection with a criminal petition filed by the state government.
The FIR had been filed by different police stations in the city against Airtel, Aircel, Idea, Tata Docomo for offences booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), for failing to verify documents of subscribers before issuing SIM cards. The cases had been filed against the CEOs of the telecom companies.
In July 2010, the Deputy Director General, Telecom Enforcement Resource and Monitoring Cell, wrote a letter to the DG and IG of Police stating that a random inspection conducted by them had revealed that there were multiple connections by service providers which had resulted in misuse of SIM cards. Following this, the city police commissioner had asked Central Crime Branch (CCB) to look into the matter.
A suo motu complaint was also filed by the Inspector of Police, Women and Narcotics Cell and CCB before various police stations in the city.
However, senior counsel C V Nagesh, appearing for the mobile service providers, informed the court that SIM cards are given to distributors by service providers who later give it to retailers.
He explained that the retailer was the person fabricating the documents before issuing it and the mobile service provider had no role to play in the process.
Justice N Anand said that there are currently over 40 crore mobile users in the country. If the distributor is committing an offence, the mobile service provider cannot be held responsible.