The High Court of Karnataka on Wednesday directed the trial court to wait till the competent authority grants sanction to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to proceed against 10 accused police officers on the charges of fabricating and planting evidences on the premises of a person accused in a single-digit lottery ticket “scam” in 2015.
While quashing the cognisance of offences taken against the accused officers by the trial court in January 2020, the High Court said the proceedings shall continue from the stage of issuance of process only after the CBI submits sanction from their prosecution from the competent authority.
The High Court also made it clear that the trial court cannot proceed against the accused based on the CBI’s chargesheet till the sanction is placed on the record.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order on the petitions filed by the 10 accused persons. They are: B.A. Padmanayan, retired Inspector General of Police; C.R. Ranganatha, retired police inspector; Kanakalakshmi B.M, G.T. Swamy, M.J. Lokesh, B.N. Shrikantha, B.M. Thippeswamy, all police inspectors; Ravi Kumar D and R. Raviprakash, police sub-inspectors; and B.S. Venugopal, head constable.
Though the CBI’s itself sought sanction for their prosecution from the State authorities and that request is still pending, the CBI had contended before the High Court that sanction is not needed as the alleged acts of the accused does not form part of the official discharge of their duty.
Apex court verdict
However, the High Court, relying on the apex court’s verdict pointed out that sanction is necessary as the offences alleged against them were committed during the ‘search and seizure,’ which was done as part of discharge of their official duty.
All of them working in the Excise Enforcement and Lottery Prohibition Wing (EE&LPW), Bengaluru, when they conducted investigation against one Parirajan N. of KGF on the allegation that he was the kingpin of illegal single-digit lottery business, and had filed chargesheet in June 2015. It was also alleged that Parirajan had nexus with some senior police officers.
CBI probe
However, the government later handed over the investigation to the CBI, which took over probe in August 2015. On investigation, the CBI gave clean chit to Parirajan but found that 10 police officers and personnel had created bogus seizures and conducted mahazars by planting lottery result sheets in the house of Parirajan.
The CBI had found that lottery results sheets were ‘created and printed’ in the office of the EE&LPW using the official computer and the printer by one of the accused police personnel on the night preceding the search conducted in the house of Parirajan.
