Land scam: CBI court rejects Hooda’s plea to postpone trial

The CBI Special Court, Haryana, today rejected applications of a former CM, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, and a co-accused, Anil Kumar Batra, for postponement of proceedings in the Manesar land scam trial.

There are 39 accused in the case. In respect of retired IAS officers Rajv Arora, Chattar Singh, Sudeep Singh Dhillon, ML Tayal and DR Dhingra, and officials Jaswant Singh, Dhare Singh, and Kulwant Singh Lamba, stay against further proceedings has been granted by the Supreme Court (SC).

Other accused, Anil Kumar Batra, M/s Frontier Home Developers Pvt Ltd, and M/s Guru Nanak Infrastructure Developers Private Ltd too have approached the apex court. No stay has been granted in their favour yet.

PK Sandhir, counsel for Hooda, submitted that allegations in the present case demonstrated that offence of conspiracy was the bedrock of the prosecution’s case and the respective roles of the accused and allegations against each of them were so interwoven and inseparable from each other that they couldn’t be segregated in any manner except at the cost of the fair trial and principles of natural justice.

He argued that holding a trial against the accused, against whom there was no stay from the SC, was not desirable, and what was required to be done was to hold a joint trial against all the accused.

CBI Public Prosecutor Jaswinder Singh Bhatti argued that the present applications had been filed solely with the intention of delaying the proceedings of the case, which has already become very old as the FIR was registered in 2015.

CBI Special Judge Rajeev Goyal said the SC had proceeded to stay further proceedings only qua the accused filing SLPs and did not stay the entire proceedings of the present case.

“In my opinion, what has not been granted by Hon’ble Supreme Court, can never be granted by this court…Hence, this court has to proceed further with the proceedings of the present case in respect of the accused persons in whose favour no order of stay exists,” said the order.

According to the CBI, Hooda, the then Principal Secretary to CM ML Tayal, the then Addl. Principal Secretary to CM Chhatar Singh, the then Director, Town & Country Planning Department SS Dhillon, and others in criminal conspiracy with one another “deliberately allowed land acquisition proceedings to lapse by not ensuring passing of award within statutorily prescribed period.”

The landowners in Manesar were forced to sell their landholdings in panic due to the threat of acquisition. The CBI added that after the abandonment of the acquisition proceedings, various licences and change of land use (CLUs) were issued to otherwise ineligible builders, thereby causing a considerable loss to the state exchequer, land owners, and wrongful gain to private builders.