The Supreme Court on Monday has issued a notice to Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa on a batch of petitions challenging her acquittal in the disproportionate case by the High Court of Karnataka. A bench headed by Justice PC Ghose had agreed to hear the petitions challenging the Karnataka high court verdict acquitting Jayalalithaa and her associates in the case in which a trial court had sentenced her to four years in jail.

"The HC has reversed the judgment and order of the trial court on untenable grounds, ignoring the material and clinching evidence which proved the case of the prosecution. The HC has chosen to reverse the judgment for no valid reasons at all," the petition said.

"It is respectfully submitted that the conclusions reached by the judge are not based on a proper appreciation of evidence and the conclusions reached are bordering on perversity and is, therefore, liable to be set aside. The judgment lacks reasoning, is not logical and is cryptic. The evidence has not been considered objectively and lacks deliberation," it added.

The apex court bench headed by Justice PC Ghose has issued the notice returnable in eight weeks on the petition filed by DMK leader K Anbazhagan and BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, both challenging Karnataka High Court verdict acquitting Jayalalithaa.

The Karnataka HC order had on May 11 ruled that the conviction by the special court suffered from infirmity and is not sustainable in law. Karnataka government in its appeal against the May 11 verdict stated that the state government prosecuting agency was not made a party before the High Court. The petition is filed through advocate Joseph Aristotle, who had also claimed that the High Court erred in computing the disproportionate assets of the AIADMK leader.

The state government in the petition had questioned as to whether the High Court had “erred in law” by giving the benefit of the doubt to Jayalalithaa in pursuance of a Supreme Court judgment holding that an accused can be acquitted if his or her disproportionate assets was to the extent of ten per cent. It also claimed that the High Court has erred by over-ruling the preliminary objections raised by the state government and that the accused had filed their appeals against conviction without impleading Karnataka as a party.

The state government in its petition alleged that if the error committed by the HC is rectified, then the percentage of the disproportionate assets would be 34.50%, which was erroneously fixed at 8.12% by the court. The HC had held that Jayalalithaa’s disproportionate assets are around Rs 2.82 crore against the prosecution claim of Rs 66.5 crore and acquitted her on the ground that it is less than 10 percent of the income and the offense is not made out.

By Premji