ACB court discharges disproportionate assets case against Kripashankar Singh

The special Anti-Corruption Bureau(ACB) court presided over by judge Dilip Gudadhe on Wednesday discharged the Congress leader and former minister Kripashankar Singh from the possession of disproportionate assets case filed against him in 2012. The court accepted the defence's arguments that there was no sanction recieved to prosecute the government servant which rendered the arrest illegal.

The defence advocate of Singh, K H Giri on November 2016 had filed for the discharge application on the grounds that the accused person being the public servant, no sanction was sought to prosecute him. Giri said that discharge application has been filed on the grounds of the prosecution's technical flaw. 

" Singh was an MLC during the year 94-99, a home minister (state) between the year 99-2004 and was a MLA till the year2014. Thus when he was arrested in the year 2012, he was still serving as a public servant and without the sanction from the appropriate authorities, the police couldn't prosecute him," said advocate Giri.

Advocate Giri further said, " The prosecution twice had approached the speaker of the state legislative assembly seeking sanction to prosecute Singh, but both the time the plea was rejected. The speaker in its reply had maintained that as per the calculations, the disproportionate assets accounted up to -0.4percent. According to the Supreme Court's orders only if a public servant's disproportionate assets is ten percent more than his known source of income, only then, he is liable for prosecution."