Former Chief Minister of Karnataka, Yeddyurappa, has been exonerated in a land denotification case. Yeddyurappa had approached the Karnataka High Court, seeking the dismissal of the First Information Report (FIR) filed against him based on a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG).
On June 1, the Karnataka High Court ruled in favor of Yeddyurappa and quashed the FIR, which accused him of illegally denotifying land through the Bangalore Development Authority. The FIR had been the subject of legal proceedings for eight years. The decision was made by a single-judge bench presided over by Justice M Nagaprasanna.
Yeddyurappa argued in his petition that the question of whether an FIR could be registered solely based on a CAG report had already been settled by a coordinated bench judgment of the High Court. The bench had previously observed that deviating from the legal procedure by initiating criminal proceedings without sufficient grounds was impermissible. It further stated that the continuation of the investigation based on these flawed FIRs would be an abuse of the legal process. The bench opined that FIRs lacking information about a cognizable offense could be quashed without delving into the merits of the allegations or the petitioner’s defense.
Considering the earlier judgment, the bench concluded that the matter had already been settled and proceeded to quash the FIR against Yeddyurappa.
