The High Court of Karnataka on Friday directed the State government to ensure that the Anti-Corruption Bureau submits within two months the final investigation report in a criminal case on alleged illegalities and corruption in providing preferential facilities to V.K. Sasikala in Bengaluru central prison when she was serving sentence in corruption case against former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa.
A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Suraj Govindaraj issued the direction while disposing of a PIL petition by K.S. Gita, a 65-year-old social worker and an educationist from Chennai.
Though the Bench noted that there is considerable delay in completing investigation as the ACB had registered the First Information Report (FIR) way back in 2018, it said that is granting two months of outer limit to submit final report in view of prevailing COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier, the Bench was informed by the government counsel that the government in February 2018 had directed the ACB to conduct the probe into allegations of corruption in giving preferential facilities to Sasikala, and sought four months of outer limit to the ACB to submit final investigation report.
It was alleged in the petition that no final report was filed in the case despite registration of the case three years ago, even though a preliminary inquiry found sufficient ingredients of illegalities.
The petitioner had also pointed out that a retired IAS officer, Vinay Kumar, who was appointed to conduct inquiry into the allegations had submitted a 295-page report with several findings on the allegations of preferential treatment.
