BENGALURU: The High Court of Karnataka on Wednesday dismissed a petition filed by Union Bank of India (UBI) seeking its directions to the state government to transfer to CBI the investigation of the scam in Karnataka Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribes Development Corporation, involving over Rs 90 crore, which was investigated by CID.
However, the court said rejection of UBI’s plea would not mean that CBI, which is parallelly investigating the crime registered by the UBI against its officials allegedly involved in the scam, cannot draw those persons into the web of proceedings, even if they are dropped by state’s CID, but that can happen in accordance with law.
The UBI contended that Section 35A of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, enables it to seek any fraud involving banking transactions to be taken up together for investigation by an independent agency like CBI. The managing director of the corporation is a high ranking official and its chairman is a sitting MLA. Therefore, it is important that the investigation should be impartial.
Rejecting the petition, Justice M Nagaprasanna said that it is a matter of record that a sitting member of the Legislative Assembly and certain high functionaries are allegedly involved in the alleged misappropriation of funds.
When ministers or high functionaries who are facing allegations and those allegations are being investigated into, such investigations must be entrusted to independent agencies, which are not under the control of the state government.
It is only then the probe will have credibility. But that cannot be based on an interpretation of Section 35A of the Act, as projected by the UBI.