Mayawati assets case: Review petition filed in SC

The supreme Court Saturday was moved seeking the review of its judgment quashing the first information report (FIR) registered by the CBI against former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati in an illegal assets case in 2003.

Pointing to the errors in the verdict quashing the FIR in the case against Mayawati, Kamlesh Verma, an intervener in the case, sought the review of the decision.

Verma said that he moved court because the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had made it known that they were not exercising the option.

The apex court bench of Justice P. Sathasivam and Justice Dipak Misra July 6 quashed the CBI FIR against Mayawati holding that the "impugned FIR is without jurisdiction and any investigation pursuant thereto is illegal and liable to be quashed, accordingly quashed".

The court upheld Mayawati's contention that the FIR filed against her by the CBI was malafide and the misreading of the apex court's orders in the Taj corridor Case.

Mayawati wanted to develop the Taj corridor, an 80-acre wasteland sandwiched between the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, as a commercial hub and amusement park. But as archaeologists did not clear the project, the apex court ordered its suspension in 2003.

Verma, who has moved the court seeking the review of its July 6 verdict, was an intervener in the appeal filed by the Mayawati seeking the quashing of the FIR by the CBI.

He contended that the court had not considered that once the investigating agency had filed the chargesheet then any challenge to it was rendered redundant.

"Public policy required that even if there was some technical flaw in the investigation, the same could not have been given precedence over the overwhelming evidence collected by the CBI against Mayawati," Verma said in his review petition.

"When it was not the case of the petitioner (Mayawati) that no offence is made out of the evidence collected by the CBI, this court could not have simply let the accused go scot-free, thus rendering the evidence nothing more than bundles of waste paper," the petition said.

The petition said the court could not have entertained Mayawati's petition under Article 32 of the constitution when it was not her case that her "fundamental rights were violated or being violated" by the filing of the FIR by the investigating agency.

The court in its judgment July 6, while taking note of the investigating agency's submission that it had relied on its order in respect of the Taj corridor case in lodging the disproportionate assets case, had held that "the method adopted by the CBI is unwarranted and without jurisdiction".