Supreme Court rejects Karnataka deputy CM Shivakumar’s plea to quash CBI case
A bench of justices Bela M Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma said the Congress leader’s plea lacked merit and there appeared to be no sound reason for the court to interfere
The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed a petition by Karnataka deputy chief minister D K Shivakumar challenging the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)’s registration of a case against him for allegedly owning assets disproportionate to his known sources of income.
A bench of justices Bela M Trivedi and Satish Chandra Sharma said the Congress leader’s plea lacked merit and that there appeared to be no sound reason for the court to interfere with the case. “How could the proceedings be quashed against you? This is a case under the Prevention of Corruption [PC] Act...We are not going to quash it,” the bench told senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi, who appeared for Shivakumar.
Rohatgi sought to raise the issue of sanction under Section 17A of the PC Act, arguing that the case against his client was registered without obtaining the prior approval of the state government under the provision. Section 17A protects public servants from being prosecuted for decisions taken as part of their official duty. The section was introduced by an amendment with effect from July 26, 2018.
The bench pointed out that the issue of prior sanction stood referred to a larger bench in view of a split judgment by a two-judge bench of the Supreme Court in January 2024. The judges on the division bench had dissented on the point of law whether the need for approval under Section 17A had to apply for all the pending cases or only those that were registered after July 26, 2018; the date when the PC Act amendment came into effect.
“As and when that question is decided by the larger bench, your matter will also get decided. How can your case be quashed on the basis of a split judgment? We are not interfering right now,” the bench told Rohatgi.
Responding, Rohatgi urged the bench to issue a notice on the plea to examine whether the same event could lead to multiple FIRs, contending that the Income Tax Department, Enforcement Directorate, and the CBI had lodged different cases based on a 2017 raid by the tax authorities.
But the bench disagreed. “These are different offences under different statutes. The Income Tax authorities cannot prosecute under the PC Act,” said the court, proceeding to dismiss Shivakumar’s petition.
In October 2020, the CBI filed an FIR against Shivakumar on charges of corruption, following the sanction obtained from the B S Yediyurappa-led BJP government on September 25, 2019. This action was based on findings from Income Tax Department searches in August 2017 at approximately 70 premises linked to the Congress leader.
The CBI has alleged that Shivakumar amassed wealth amounting to ₹74.93 crore, disproportionate to his known sources of income, from April 2013 to April 2018, during his tenure as the energy minister in the Congress-led Karnataka government.
On April 20, 2023, a single judge of the Karnataka high court rejected Shivakumar’s plea to quash the sanction given on September 25, 2019, by the BJP government. Shivakumar argued that the state had only given its consent and not a formal sanction. On October 19, 2023, the high court also rejected Shivakumar’s plea to quash the entire CBI case against him, granting the CBI three months to complete its investigation.
The high court while declining Shivakumar’s contention that the FIR was registered by the CBI with a “malafide and political malice,” emphasised that the investigation was based on extensive documents and evidence collected by the Income Tax department, ED, and the CBI.
The top court in March this year quashed another case lodged against Shivakumar under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in connection with the 2017 raid by the tax authorities. It nixed the PMLA case in view of its November 2023 ruling that a criminal conspiracy punishable under Section 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) cannot be the only offence for opening a money-laundering probe.
Shivakumar was arrested by the ED in September 2019. He was released on bail a month later. In 2019, the ED wrote to the Karnataka’s BJP government to investigate the possibility of corruption in the money laundering by ordering a CBI probe against Shivakumar. In November 2023, the Karnataka Cabinet decided to withdraw the sanction for the CBI investigation against Shivakumar. The CBI challenged this before the high court, which is currently seized of the issue.