Illegal land deals: HC reserves order in petition against FIRs

RANCHI: The Jharkhand high court (HC) has concluded hearing and reserved its order in the case challenging two FIRs lodged by the state police against BJP’s Godda parliamentarian Nishikant Dubey’s wife and her company for allegedly inking illegal land deals.

The matter relates to a complaint lodged by one Vishnukant Jha with Deoghar town police station in July last year against Dubey’s wife Anamika Gautam and others for allegedly conspiring with government officials to purchase a property worth ₹20 crore at an undervalued rate of ₹3 crore.

Acting on the complaint, police registered an FIR against

Gautam under Sections 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc.), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 120 B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intension) of Indian Penal Code (IPC).

A second FIR was lodged by one Kiran Devi a few days later in July last year against Online Entertainment Pvt Ltd, represented by Gautam, and others for alleged fraud committed in purchase of another piece of land.

Aggrieved by this, Gautam moved the HC by a petition to quash the two FIRs.

Earlier, the court had stayed the police from taking any coercive measure against Gautam and her company.

However, the state government too had approached the HC to vacate the stay order, highlighting that the accused were not cooperating with the investigation.

The bench of justice Ananda Sen on Thursday heard the contentions of two senior lawyers of the Supreme Court, Mukul Rohtagi and Dushyant Dave, representing Gautam and the state government, respectively.

“Upon conclusion of the hearing, the bench asked both the parties to submit their written arguments in not more than five pages,” said Gautam’s Ranchibased lawyer Diwakar Upadhyay.

Gautam argued that false and fabricated cases were lodged against her. Moreover, the matter is connected with civil dispute and no criminal offences are made out, she said.