Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise (NICE) on Thursday sought a stay of the Lokayukta court’s order pertaining to alleged irregularities in the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure project undertaken by it.
NICE managing director, Ashok Kheny, its sister concern Nandi Economic Corridor Enterprise former director Shivakumar Kheny and chairman NICE, Baba Kalyani filed five petitions in court in this regard and also sought exemption from producing certified copies of the probe order, stating it has not been released. The respondent (complainant), social activist and entrepreneur T J Abraham objected and sought to know how the petitioners could seek a stay of the order without even going through it.
Justice H N Nagamohan Das before whom the petitions filed under Sections 226 and 482 CrPC came up, asked Abraham how he was present in the court when the matter was being heard, to which Abraham submitted he was the complainant. Senior counsel Dushyant Dave of NICE and its sister concern submitted the Lokayukta court had “intentionally withheld the certified copy of the order even after 10 days”.
Abraham said even he was yet to receive the order copy and stated since it was a voluminous order of nearly 500 pages it was corrected before releasing. Dave then prayed that the Special Lokayukta Court may be directed to issue the copies of the order forthwith.
Justice Nagamohan Das then directed Special Judge Lokayukta to initiate steps to issue certified copies of the order to all the applicants. The Judge said since he had represented Abraham in similar matters earlier when he was an advocate, he wished to recuse from the case.
“I am disabled and therefore I cannot take up the matter,” the Judge said. He then directed the registry to place the matter before the Chief Justice who would take a decision on assigning it to an appropriate bench.
On Oct 25, the Lokayukta Court ordered probe against former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda, former External Affairs Minister SM Krishna and former Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa and 27 others in the case. Judge NK Sudhindra Rao had directed Additional Director General of Police (Lokayukta) HN Sathyanarayana Rao to conduct investigation under 156(3) CrPC against all the accused in connection with the alleged irregularities and illegalities in the BMIC project, awarded to NICE and its sister companies.
The 30 accused include Ashok Kheny, former Minister RV Deshpande, Congress leader DK Shivakumar, Public Works Minister CM Udasi, ICICI Bank Private Limited, industrialist Baba Kalyani, William Weld, former Governor of Massachusetts, USA, and Richard Hangan, another US National who was part of the consortium.
The other 75 accused of the total 105 have been excluded from investigation.
