New Delhi: Railway Minister Lalu Prasad and his wife Rabri Devi on Monday got a major reprieve with the Supreme Court rejecting two petitions seeking cancellation of his bail in the multi-crore-fodder scam and disproportionate assets cases.

A three-judge Bench of Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Justice A.R. lakshmanan and Justice S.H. Kapadia by a majority of 2:1 dismissed the public interest petitions filed by Rajiv Ranjan Singh, Member of Parliament and Sushil Modi, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister, seeking cancellation of bail to Mr. Prasad and the former Bihar Chief Minister, Ms. Rabri Devi, alleging that they were interfering with the trial.

Justice Balakrishnan and Justice Lakshmanan, in separate but concurring judgments, held that no ground was made by the petitioners to allow the petitions. Justice Kapadia, however, in his dissenting judgment disagreed with a majority view and held that public interest petitions in such an important case involving crores of rupees could be filed and Supreme Court could interfere in such matters.

Criminal litigation

In his judgment, Justice Balakrishnan said both the petitioners were not connected with the filing of the cases against Mr. Prasad and his wife, as they were not the de-facto complainants in this case. He said: "It is for the prosecution to prove its case and the respondents 4 and 5 [Mr. Prasad and his wife] to deny that the allegations are not true and they did not have the disproportionate income as alleged by the prosecution. It is a criminal litigation exclusively between respondents 4 and 5 and the State.

"It is also important to note that in a case of this nature, nobody else has got any right to interfere especially by way of public interest litigation or else such public interest litigation would only hamper the course of justice and may cause prejudice to the accused by denying a fair trial," he added.

He said the petitioners could not prove anything towards their charge that Mr. Prasad and Ms. Rabri Devi had interfered in the course of justice and had misused the privilege of bail. "The petitioners have also no case that they [Mr. Prasad and his wife] are likely to flee from justice. The petitioners have not made out any case for cancellation of the bail," Justice Balakrishnan said.

Subversion of law

In his judgment, Justice Lakshmanan said that once a charge sheet was filed in a competent court, monitoring of the trial by the Supreme Court would be a subversion of criminal law.

On the plea to transfer the special judge, Munilal Paswan, he said: "There is absolutely no adverse entry against Mr. Paswan and that poor record if any is not the record of integrity and that no gradation has been given to officers after 1997 onwards, including Mr. Paswan."

On the issue of non-filing of an appeal against the findings of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, Justice Lakshmanan pointed out that legal opinion obtained showed that there was no question of law involved in these cases for filing an appeal and that consideration of this aspect had been done properly and independently and that there had been extraneous consideration.

"Totally foreign"

He said: "PILs are not meant to advance the political gain and also settle their scores under the guise of a public interest litigation and to fight a legal battle. We are also of the opinion that PIL is totally foreign to pending criminal proceedings. The records placed before us would only go to show that Mr. Prasad had no hand in any of these matters whether in the appointment of judges or in the change of the prosecutor or on the decision not to file an appeal in the income tax cases."

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