Bengaluru: The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday quashed an FIR registered against Union Ministers Nirmala Sitharaman, JP Nadda and others at Bengaluru's Tilak Nagar police station on charges of misusing the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to get multi-crore donations through electoral bonds.
The order comes as a major relief for Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Union Health Minister JP Nadda and former BJP state unit president Nalin Kumar Kateel.
A single-judge bench of Justice M Nagaprasanna passed the order on a petition filed by Kateel, seeking to quash the FIR. A detailed copy of the order is yet to be made available.
The counsel for the petitioner said that the interpretation of Section 384 of the IPC does not change on the facts of each case. The victims have not appeared in the court and there is no harm to the complainant in this case so the issue of extortion is not applicable here, he said.
During the previous hearing, the petitioner's counsel said that the allegations in the complaint are a prime instance of extortion. The person who is the target of extortion has also benefited from the crime. After donating to the BJP through electoral bonds, the investigation by the ED and the Income Tax Department was stopped against him, resulting which, he did not file a complaint. It is the common people who should file a complaint in this regard, he argued.
Notably, the Special Magistrate's Court had ordered the Tilak Nagar Police to register a case under sections 384 (extortion), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 of the IPC against Sitharaman, Nadda, Kateel, BJP state unit president B Y Vijayendra and some officials of the ED after hearing a complaint filed by Adarsh R Iyer, who is the co-president of the Janadhikar Sangharsh Parishad in Bengaluru. An FIR was registered accordingly.
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