HC reserves verdict on Hooda's plea against CBI court’s order

The Punjab and Haryana High Court today reserved its verdict on a petition filed by a former CM, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, in the alleged Manesar land scam.

Hooda has challenged the order of the special CBI court, Panchkula, which rejected his plea to suspend the trial in the case, paving the way for the framing of charges against him and other accused. The petition filed by Hooda seeks the quashing of the order dated September 19 passed by the special CBI judge. The court had rejected his plea and also directed the framing of charges on the next date of hearing.

Hooda argued that the trial court's decision to frame charges was invalid, as the Supreme Court had stayed proceedings against some co-accused. Therefore, framing the charges against the other accused would amount to "splitting the trial into separate parts", which was invalid.

Lawyers appearing for Hooda argued that the special court rejected his application solely on the grounds that the Supreme Court had stayed proceedings only for those accused who had filed special leave petitions.

Hooda, along with several former officials and other individuals, has been named as accused in the case, which is pending before the special CBI court.

The Central agency had started a probe in September 2015, and in 2018, it filed a chargesheet running into 80,000-pages against 34 people, including Hooda. The CBI alleged that hundreds of acres were acquired at cheap rates from farmers in Manesar and surrounding villages in Gurugram district in the name of government purposes, but later licences for the land were issued to real estate companies, builders, and colonisers at highly concessional rates.

In January this year, the CBI had sought expeditious disposal of the case, arguing that a stay has been in operation in favour of the accused persons for the last four years.