NEW DELH, 1 April 2008 — The Supreme Court yesterday dismissed an Uttar Pradesh government plea to order prosecution of Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan in the Barabanki land deal case.
The court dismissed a petition filed by the Uttar Pradesh government challenging an Allahabad High Court order that restrained it from initiating any criminal, civil or revenue proceedings against Bachchan in the case.
The Allahabad High Court absolved Bachchan of any wrongdoing on Dec. 11, 2007. The court found that Bachchan did not "commit any fraud or manipulate any surreptitious entry in the revenue records."
Clearing the movie star of criminal charges, the Allahabad High Court in its ruling said that since he had relinquished his claim over the land, all criminal charges against him should be dropped.
Dismissing the Uttar Pradesh government's petition against the high court judgment, the Supreme Court said there was no need of any action against Bachchan.
The court also declared that as the actor had returned the land in question, he cannot be charged with forgery. Instead, strict action should be taken against the officials of Land Transaction Department and explanation demanded for alleged discrepancies, the court said.
The ruling was given by a bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justice Aftab Alam.
The ruling came as a great relief for the Bollywood star. "I have always respected the law and I am very happy with the decision," Bachchan said in his reaction to the judgment.
Lawyer K.K. Venugopal, who appeared for the UP government, said there was a case of manipulation of revenue records, which had benefited Bachchan. The manipulation needed to be investigated, he said.
The UP government had earlier charged Bachchan with having committed another fraud by claiming to be a resident of 17, Clive Road, Allahabad while filing an application for allotment of farmland in Barabanki district. Bachchan was allotted about 70,000 square feet of prime land at Daulatpur village by the previous Mulayam Singh Yadav government.
On the basis of documents identifying him as a farmer, Bachchan secured a 24-acre plot of agricultural land at Lonavla, Pune in the mid-1990s. The Faizabad additional commissioner, with judicial powers in land disputes, had ruled that the 1993 Barabanki land transfer in Bachchan's name was illegal.
Critics had earlier labeled the case as one of political vendetta against Bachchan, deliberately initiated to implicate him in a criminal case. Started by a Congress party worker in 2006, the case was picked by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) when it came to power in Uttar Pradesh in 2007. The case had been making the round of courts the whole of last year. Despite the state high court having ruled in favor of Bachchan in December, the government of Mayawati took the case to the Supreme Court.
