Bengaluru: The high court dismissed a criminal-revision petition filed by CBI challenging the trial court’s order to discharge sub-inspector Gowri Shankar in the multi-crore I Monitory Advisory (IMA) scam case.
The allegation against him was that he demanded and accepted illegal gratification on various occasions from main accused Mohammed Mansoor Khan through one Vaseem. This was to favour IMA by not taking any action on various complaints registered against it.
On July 15, 2024, the special court discharged Gowri Shankar, arraigned as accused no. 28 in the case. At the relevant time, he was working at Commercial Street police station, and is posted at Jeevan Bima Nagar station now.
Challenging the trial court’s order, CBI argued that the special court acted beyond its jurisdiction and held a mini-trial before discharging Gowri Shankar. On the other hand, Gowri Shankar submitted that the trial court is not the prosecution’s postman and added that the order discharging him, running into 100 pages, considered the entire spectrum of the law.
After perusing the materials on record, Justice M Nagaprasanna pointed out that the trial court discharged Gowri Shankar after holding that except for a diary noting in which an entry made in an Excel sheet read, ‘Gowri-Vaseem Bhai’, there was nothing else against him.
The Supreme Court had clearly held that it is a trial court’s duty to entertain a petition seeking discharge of an accused and examine all materials, though not by conducting a rowing inquiry, the judge said. It is more imperative for the trial court to consider at the stage of discharge whether sufficient grounds are available to frame charges against the accused and not act as a mere post office to the prosecution, the judge added.
Justice Nagaprasanna observed that in the case on hand, the trial court had discharged Gowri Shankar after considering the entire spectrum of allegations against him, and the same doesn’t warrant any interference.