ED registers case information report against Siddaramaiah in MUDA case
BENGALURU: The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) has registered an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) against Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, his wife Parvathy and others in the Mysore Urban Development Authority (MUDA) case under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002 at its Bengaluru zonal office.
Sources on condition of anonymity said that the ECIR has been registered based on the FIR registered by the Karnataka Lokayukta last weekend against Siddaramaiah, his wife, his brother-in-law Mallikarjuna Swamy and a former landowner - Devaraju.
Swamy had purchased the land from Swamy and gifted it to Parvathy. The charges range from corruption, cheating to forgery in connection with the allotment of 14 MUDA housing sites to Parvathy in 2021.
The FIR has invoked various sections of the earlier criminal code - the Indian Penal Code (IPC) - such as 120B (criminal conspiracy), 166 (public servant disobeying law, with intent to cause injury to any person), 403 (dishonest misappropriation of property), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 426 (mischief), 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 340 (wrongful confinement) and 351 (assault).
The Mysuru unit of the Lokayukta police had filed the FIR on the direction of the special court for elected representatives, Mysuru on September 25 on the basis of a private complaint by RTI activist Snehamayi Krishna.
An ECIR is similar to an FIR, but there's no need for it to be shared with the accused. It opens the doors for attachment of assets belonging to the CM and his family, besides some other coercive measures. On September 24, the Karnataka High Court upheld the approval given by Governor Thawarchand Gehlot to the three private individuals/complainants to file cases against the Siddaramaiahn under Section 17A of the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act.
Siddaramaiah, 76, had last week said he was being targeted in the MUDA issue as the opposition was "scared" of him and noted that it was the first such "political case" against him.
In the MUDA site-allotment case, it is alleged that compensatory sites were given to Siddaramaiah's wife in an upmarket area in Mysuru, which had higher property value as compared to the location of her land that was "acquired" by MUDA.
