india

Updated: Apr 12, 2019 12:16 IST

The Central Bureau of Investigation told the Supreme Court on Friday that it had closed probe against Mulayam Singh Yadav in 2007 disproportionate assets case, days after the Samajwadi Party patriarch said the allegations levelled at him were politically motivated.

The investigating agency has been given four weeks to state its stand in an affidavit and also clarify its further course of action in the matter

The preliminary inquiry in the case was started after the top court directing the CBI to look into the graft allegations.

Mulayam Singh Yadav had filed an affidavit in the top court on Thursday, also saying that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had already cleared him in the case.

The affidavit by the Samajwadi Party leader came after the top court issued a notice to him in March on a petition by the advocate and Congress leader Vishwanath Chaturvedi seeking a status report on the probe against Mulayam Singh Yadav and his sons, Akhilesh and Prateek.

A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta had also given CBI two weeks for the response. The probe agency is yet to file its reply.

Also read: Politically motivated case, Mulayam Singh to Supreme Court

Chaturvedi, in his application, has claimed the CBI has failed to update the court on the status of investigations against Yadav and his sons despite a lapse of 11 years since a petition was filed in SC.

Chaturvedi moved the top court in 2005 with a plea for a CBI probe against Mulayam, Akhilesh and Prateek and Akhilesh’s wife, Dimple Yadav. He accused Mulayam of corruption and amassing disproportionate assets amounting to over Rs 100 crore during his tenure as the chief minister of UP between 1999 and 2005.

In his 2005 petition, Chaturvedi cited income tax returns and other “reliable documents” of the Yadavs’ to allege that they possessed disproportionate assets.

On March 1, 2007, the top court directed the CBI to inquire into allegations and also find out whether the plea regarding the disproportionate assets was “correct or not”. A review plea against this order was dismissed in 2012.

The court later dropped Dimple Yadav’s name from the list of people to be investigated as she was not holding any public office then and therefore could not be subjected to any investigation.

Mulayam claimed in his affidavit that CBI had in 2007 closed the DA case against him and his family members saying that “no prima facie case is made out against them”.

The veteran SP leader said that the CBI filed two status reports in 2007 where the agency came to the conclusion that no case under the Prevention of Corruption Act. In addition, after the scrutiny of his and his family’s assets by the CBI, the income tax department proceeded against him, but could not find anything.

Yadav, opposing tabling of the status report by the CBI in the DA case against him, has relied on the 2007 judgment and said that there was no direction to CBI to register a first information report against him or submit a report to the court on the matter.