The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed the petition of former BJP president Bangaru Laxman for quashing of the case related to bribe “on camera” allegedly linked to “fictitious” defence deals enacted by Thelka publication in a sting operation during the NDA regime to expose corruption in defence purchases.
A bench of Justices A.K. Ganguly and J.S. Khehar found no merit in Laxman’s petition and rejected it while going ahead for his trial by a special CBI court in the capital. Earlier, the Delhi high court had rejected his identical petition.
Mr Laxman’s two special leave petitions against the HC order was admitted on May 11 by the top court to consider the main question of law raised by him regarding making of his former private secretary as approver by the CBI.
In the first petition Laxman raised three basic legal question to challenge the filing of the chargesheet against him by the CBI — whether a criminal case could be filed on the basis of a sting operation carried by a media organisation purely for the purpose of a news story, whether he could be proceeded in the court of law when he had no “predisposition” to commit a crime, whether offering of inducement by a journalist to commit a particular act and then frame him in a criminal case is not the abuse of the process of the law and against the public policy.
In the second petition Laxman challenged an order of the special CBI court in Delhi granting pardon to his former private secretary Satyamurthy and the agency naming him as approver and crucial witness.
The contention of his counsel was that as per the law the trial court could not entertain a petition for pardon before taking cognisance of the chargesheet but in his case the special CBI judge had exactly done the same.
The special judge allowed the application of Satyamurthy even before he had taken cognisance of chargesheet against Laxman, Laxman had claimed.