Disproportionate assets case against Karnataka BJP MLA Renuka Acharya to continue: HC

Justice K Natarajan dismisses the MLA’s claim of multiple FIRs being booked for the same offence.

The court also observed that the world was moving towards transparency and Section 69A of the Information Technology Act requires recording of reasons for takedowns. (File)

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The Karnataka High Court has declined to quash a disproportionate assets case booked against BJP MLA Renuka Acharya, the worth of whose assets allegedly grew from Rs 25 Lakh in 2004 to nearly Rs 5 crore in 2013.

A single-judge bench of Justice K Natarajan dismissed Acharya’s petition on March 28. In 2015, an FIR was lodged by the Davangere Lokayukta police against Acharya under Indian Penal Code sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) as well as provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.

The FIR was registered following a private complaint made to the Lokayukta court. Acharya and his brother then challenged the FIR in the high court on procedural grounds as the complainant had not directly approached police to get it registered. The court quashed the FIR in 2015 but allowed the complainant to pursue the matter.

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The complainant then approached the Lokayukta police superintendent and got the current FIR registered. Acharya’s counsel argued that this amounted to a case of two FIRs registered for the same offence and would be an abuse of the process of law.

The bench, however, rejected this claim noting that the court had already quashed the first FIR, and dismissed the petition.

“Admittedly, the complainant, without approaching the Lokayukta police at Davangere in order to file First Information as required… before the Superintendent of Police, but he has directly filed a private complaint before the district court and got it referred to the police for investigation under section 156 (3) of CrPC. Therefore, the co-ordinate bench of the High Court has rightly quashed [it],” the bench said.

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