Mumbai, Sep 29 (IANS) The Bombay High Court Thursday reserved its order on a writ petition seeking a probe into allegations of corruption against Mumbai Congress chief Kripashankar Singh.
The court will decide in the next ten days whether to form a special investigation team and lodge a first information report (FIR) against Singh in the matter, said a lawyer for the petitioner, social activist Sanjay Tiwari.
A division bench of Chief Justice Mohit Shah and Justice Roshan Dalvi reserved the order for the next 10 days and asked all the parties concerned to submit their written submissions to the court within eight days.
Tiwari has leveled several charges against Singh and his family members and also sought to link him with the Madhu Koda scam. Koda, a former Jharkhand chief minister, is accused of graft and money laundering.
Singh, a powerful state Congress leader, is a former state minister and currently a legislator from Kalina constituency in north-west Mumbai.
Following the writ petition, a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) Singh has faced independent probes from the Enforcement Directorate, the Income Tax department and the Maharashtra Anti-Corruption Bureau.
Through his counsel Mahesh Jethmalani, Tiwari has demanded setting up of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) and registration of an FIR against Singh.
He has also sought copies of the investigation reports of the three agencies.
Opposing the demands, Singh’s lawyer Mukul Rohatgi and the lawyers of the investigating agencies contended that the reports are ‘status reports’ meant for perusal of the court.
The state ACB was represented by Advocate-General Ravi Kadam while IT and ED were represented by Additional Solicitor General D. Khambata.
On July 21 this year, a division bench consisting of Justice Ranjana Desai (now promoted to Supreme Court) and Justice R.V. More, while examining copies of the probe reports, had said that prima facie there was evidence against Singh and the petition was maintainable.
