Thaindian News

New Delhi, Dec 15 (IANS) The Delhi High Court Thursday dismissed a trial court’s summons to Samajwadi Party MP Rewati Raman Singh in the 2008 cash-for-votes scandal in parliament saying the order was delivered “wrongly, without application of mind.”

The trial court Oct 14 had asked the Lok Sabha member to appear before it Nov 3.

Justice Suresh Kait allowed Rewati Raman Singh’s plea to quash the trial court’s summons and said: “I am not giving any opinion on this issue for the reason that I am of the view that the trial court special judge has wrongly, without application of mind and only on the submission of the accused’s counsel has issued the impunged order.”

Keeping in mind the observation of another bench of this court and its Nov 11 order granting bail to six accused, he said: “I find that there was no material available before the special judge. Accordingly, I quash the summoning order against the petitioner (Rewati Raman Singh).”

Justice Kait also said: “The members of the parliamentary committee have also given dissenting views with regard to the recommendation of initiation of action against the petitioners.”

On July 22, 2008, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs Faggan Singh Kulaste, Mahavir Bhagora and Ashok Argal waved wads of currency notes in the Lok Sabha ahead of a trust vote, alleging they were given the money to vote in favour of the Manmohan Singh government.

After a Supreme Court rap for a shoddy probe, Delhi Police July 17, this year, made their first arrest in the case, taking Amar Singh’s secretary Sanjeev Saxena into custody.

Three days later, middleman Suhail Hindustani was arrested and Sep 6 Kulaste and Bhagora, who are no longer MPs, were taken into custody.

Sudheendra Kulkarni, the media advisor to Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he was the prime minister, was the sixth accused to be arrested in the case when he appeared before the court Sep 27.

A second supplementary chargesheet filed Oct 3 made Argal, a BJP MP from Bhind in Madhya Pradesh, an accused in the case. However, all the accused are already out on bail.

The high court earlier issued notice to police asking them to submit the audio-video CDs of a sting operation in which Rewati Raman Singh was allegedly seen talking to BJP MPs.

The court said that none of the petitioners were the beneficiaries of the amount received by three MPs from Saxena. “In fact it was the prosecution’s own case that the MPs did this act to entrap Congress and Samajwadi Party so as to expose them.”