The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday stayed the continued trial in opposition to former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and Associated Journals Limited (AJL) in a case associated to the alleged allotment of a plot of land in Panchkula.
Congress chief’s counsel Arshdeep Singh Cheema mentioned the order got here on two petitions, one from Hooda and the opposite of AJL. A single bench of Justice Arvind Singh Sangwan stayed the proceedings in opposition to Hooda within the particular CBI court docket in Panchkula. The court docket has additionally issued discover to the CBI. The detailed order was but to be issued by the HC.
On April 16, a particular CBI court docket in Panchkula framed fees in opposition to Hooda within the AJL plot allotment case. The fees have been framed beneath sections 120-B (occasion to felony conspiracy) and 420 (dishonest) of the IPC and part 13(1) (d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act.
Hooda and Congress chief Motilal Vora, who’s now deceased, have been made accused within the case.
Hooda, alongside together with his counsel, senior advocates Kapil Sibal and RS Cheema, argued by Arshdeep Singh Cheema that the April 16 order handed by the particular CBI decide be put aside and acquit the petitioner of all fees.
Hooda, by his counsel, argued that the particular CBI decide “failed to appreciate the standards laid down at the stage of consideration of the charge and thus the matter was not examined in proper legal context” by the order of the CBI court docket, petitioner. argued, “the vice of selective reading of material placed on record” and at this stage additionally suffers from “cherry-picking of evidence favorable to the prosecution”. The counsel argued that the particular decide had didn’t keep in mind the totality of the details.
It was additionally argued that “the lack of use of the critical mind and the lack of an objective approach to the question are clearly evident upon careful observation of the order”. “A reading of the order reveals that the Judge has framed the charge of conspiracy specifying the period from 2005 to 2013. There is no legal or rational basis for this insertion of the 2013 expiry date and it is understandable that this date How has it come,” argued the petitioner.
The CBI had in December 2018 filed a chargesheet in opposition to Hooda and the then AJL chairman Vora in reference to alleged irregularities within the reallocation of a plot in Panchkula. The company had then claimed that the re-allotment of the plot to AJL triggered a lack of Rs 67 lakh to the exchequer.
The CBI had mentioned that AJL was allotted a plot in Panchkula in 1982, on which no development happened for 10 years, after which the Haryana Urban Development Authority took over the plot.
However, in 2005, allegedly in violation of norms, the identical plot was allotted to AJL on the outdated price. As Chief Minister, Hooda was the ex-officio chairman of the authority.
The Enforcement Directorate was additionally probing the matter and had earlier filed a cost sheet on this case. The ED, in a press release earlier, had alleged that Hooda had supported the completion of development by AJL within the 12 months 2014 by giving three undue extensions to the AJL for development on the mentioned plot from May 2008 to May 10, 2012.
The company mentioned Hooda allotted the pot to AJL by “openly abusing his official position”.
The former Haryana Chief Minister alleged that “dishonestly the said plot has been freshly allotted to AJL under the guise of re-allotment at the original rates, also in violation of the necessary conditions and policy of HUDA (Haryana Urban Development Authority). The interest has been allotted vide order dated August 28, 2005.”
The ED had registered a felony grievance of cash laundering within the case in 2016 on the premise of the CBI’s FIR, which took over the investigation on the request of the BJP authorities of Haryana and a felony FIR registered by the Haryana Vigilance Bureau. .
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
