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The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked an advocate pursuing the Bofors pay-off case to withdraw his petition seeking directions to the Central Bureau of Investigation to take action for stopping defreezing of bank accounts of Italian businessman Ottavio Quattarocchi, an accused in the case, in London.
The apex court, however, gave liberty to the lawyer to file a fresh writ petition, saying the prayers made in the petition filed in 2006 has become infructuous. "You withdraw this pending petition and file a fresh writ petition as none of the prayers survives," a Bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Justices Deepak Verma and B S Chauhan said. The Bench declared the petition as "dismissed as withdrawn".
It passed the order after advocate Ajay Agrawal, who wanted to pursue the petition with amended prayers, accepted the suggestion of the Bench and withdrew his petition and various other applications filed by him relating to Quattrocchi.
Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium submitted an application by CBI for withdrawal of the case against Quattrocchi was pending before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate and Agrawal has opposed it. The matter is listed for hearing before the CMM on Wednesday.
When the matter came up for hearing, the Bench said nothing survives in the petition as the accounts of the accused had already been defreezed. However, Agrawal submitted CBI was anxious to finish the case against Quattrocchi.
Advocate Prashant Bhushan, who joined Agrawal, also said there were various issues which required to be heard by the court. They submitted that the matter cannot be allowed to be disposed of as several related developments had taken place after the filing of petition relating to Quattrocchi. The court said any other issues relating to the matter can be raised by the petitioner in the fresh writ petition.
A fresh application was also moved by the advocate on March 22 seeking to restrain the government from closing criminal cases against Quattrocchi relating to Bofors payoffs and to take steps to extradite him to face trial in India. He had also sought direction for constituting a Special Investigative Team to probe the alleged role played by some government officials leading to withdrawal of Red Corner Notice against Quattrocchi and defreezing of his accounts.
He had sought a direction for CBI to withdraw the application filed in the trial court against the prosecution of Quattrocchi.
Questioning the role of the Centre and its authorities, the lawyer had submitted there was a conspiracy of not providing all the relevant documents before the extradition court in Argentina where he was caught by the local police. During the earlier hearings, the court was informed that not only the Italian businessman withdrew the amount from the bank in London but CBI had failed to secure his extradition.
Agrawal has also challenged the Delhi High Court verdict of May 31, 2005, quashing charges against the Europe-based Hinduja brothers in the case after CBI had failed to file the appeal within the mandatory 90 days. The apex court has admitted his petition and issued notices to CBI and others.