BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court on Monday dismissed the petition of the prime accused in Maharshi Valmiki Scheduled Tribe Development Corporation scam questioning the chargesheet against him.
G Satyanarayana Varma, a civil contractor from Hyderabad, is in judicial custody. The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had filed the chargesheet against him along with others in the multi-crore scam.
This is the second round of proceedings in which the HC has declined to interfere with the trial. Earlier, on June 12, 2025, a coordinate bench of the court dismissed the petition filed by Varma questioning his arrest on June 11, 2024, as illegal and consequently seeking his release from judicial custody.
It was alleged that about Rs 90 crore was fraudulently transferred to accounts opened in the names of fictitious business entities, to which Varma has helped. The further allegation is that he has received part of the money through accused No 3 in the form of cash and gold, besides conspiring with other accused.
The police have unearthed Rs 8 crore in cash and about 15 kilograms of gold from Varma’s residence. Seeking dismissal of the petition, Additional State Public Prosecutor BN Jagadeesha argued that Varma is a key conspirator of large-scale misappropriation of funds of the corporation, which runs to the tune of Rs 188 crore.
The grounds taken in this petition were also the same grounds in the petition filed earlier, which was rejected. There are no changed circumstances to file a fresh petition, and hence the petition is not maintainable, he argued.
Justice M Nagaprasanna noted that the petitioner wants to resurrect substantially the same grounds interlaced with a plea of quashment of proceedings. This is clearly impermissible in law.
To permit otherwise would be putting a premium on fragmented litigation and reducing the judicial process to a stratagem for delay. Grounds that were manifestly available at the time of the first petition cannot be exhumed later to prop up a second petition, the court added.
