The Special Court of the Crime Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has acquitted the former Karnataka chief minister and BJP state president Yeddyurappa on Wednesday from all the charges of alleged illegal gratification from mining companies through a trust managed by his family members.

The famous case of South West Mining was first came under spotlight in the Lokayukta report on illegal mining, Part II, submitted by the then Lokayukta Justice N. Santosh Hegde. Later, the CBI had registered the case in May 2012, after activist S.R. Hiremath filed the Lokayukta report in the Supreme Court and demanded the orders from the Court to the CBI to initiate investigation into the incidents of corruption listed into the report.

The CBI had filed a charge sheet in the case against the former Karnataka chief minister as well as 13 others including his sons B.Y. Raghavendra and B.Y. Vijayendra, his son-in-law Sohan Kumar, former minister Krishnaiah Setty and several of the top leadership of JSW Steel, including Sajjan Jindal.

In the charge sheet mainly two allegations were placed against Mr. Yeddyurapp. First, as a CM, he had misused his office to denotify a land parcel in Bengaluru for Rs. 40 lakh and which his kin sold it to South West Mining company, a subsidiary of JSW for whooping Rs. 20 crore. Even after the guidance value of the land was Rs. 1.5 crore. The charge sheet added that the South West Mining company had also donated another Rs. 20 crore to Shimoga-based Prerna Education Trust by Mr. Yeddyurappa’s sons.

Mr. Yeddyurapp at first appealed many times in the Supreme Court to quash the case, but all failed. However, in 2014, surprisingly he demanded for the speedy trial in the case.

By Prajakt