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Court order in JMM bribery case reserved till July 28

A Central Bureau of Investigation court today reserved till July 28 its order on an application seeking implementation of the Supreme Court judgement in the JMM MPs bribery case against former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao and 19 others.

Additional Sessions Judge Ajit Bharihoke reserved his order after former law minister H R Bharadwaj, counsel for accused and former Union minister Satish Sharma, told the court that his client could not be tried along with the Opposition MPs provided immunity from legal proceedings in the case.

Proceeding the trial without complying with the apex court order was illegal, Bharadwaj said.

A five-member Constitution Bench had, in a three-two verdict, observed that under the Constitution, MPs cannot be prosecuted for taking bribes if it related to voting in Parliament.

Bharadwaj said that excluding the bribe takers from the trial in the light of the apex court order would change the very nature of the charges against his client and other accused as they would no longer be part of the substantive offence -- criminal conspiracy to defeat the July 28, 1993 no-confidence motion against the Rao government.

In any criminal case, it was mandatory for the prosecution to clearly state the offences and the nature of evidence against the accused to enable him to prepare his defence, he said.

The Supreme Court had also ruled that MPs were public servants and they could not be prosecuted without sanction from competent authority. But this was not followed by the CBI in the bribery case, he said.

CBI counsel A K Dutt argued that the Supreme Court judgment, which was delivered in April, did not have any retrospective effect to be applied in the bribery case.

The MPs charged with taking bribes are Jharkhand Mukti Morcha leaders Suraj Mandal, Shibu Soren and Simon Marandi, former Union minister Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav, Roshan Lal, Anadi Saran Das, Abhay Pratap Singh and Haji Ghulam Mohammed.

The other accused in the case include former Karnataka chief minister M Veerappa Moily and former Union ministers Ajit Singh, Buta Singh and Satish Sharma.

UNI

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