BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Saturday said that it is not necessary to consider the plea of a petitioner to transfer the investigation into three cases registered in connection with the sleaze CD row to the Central Bureau of Investigation at this stage.
A division bench of Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Suraj Govindaraj passed the order after going through the status report on the investigation submitted by Soumendu Mukherjee, who is heading the Special Investigation Team (SIT), in response to directions issued by the court.
While ordering the notice to the State Government on April 5, on two separate PILs on the CD row, allegedly involved by former BJP minister Ramesh Jarkiholi, the court had directed the SIT to place on record, in a sealed cover, the report of the investigation so far carried out. Accordingly, the report was submitted to the court on Saturday.
Seeking directions to refer the matter to the CBI for probe in order to ensure proper investigation or to constitute a central investigation team under the supervision of the high court, advocate S Umesh, in his PIL, prayed the court to issue directions to the authorities concerned for implementing the guidelines issued by the Bombay High Court with regard to “Media coverage on cases under enquiry/investigation, etc”.
In another PIL, advocate Geetha Misra questioned the manner in which selective information pertaining to investigation is being leaked to the media, which affects the rights of the accused in some cases.