New Delhi, Jul 2 (IANS): The Delhi High Court has sought a response from the Delhi Police over a petition seeking transfer of a case, involving Italian lawyer Stefano Bagianti, from the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on the grounds that the probe has been compromised in collusion with the accused and the Italian lawyer.
A single judge bench of the high court presided by Justice Yogesh Khanna issued notice to the Delhi Police and listed the matter for further hearing on July 21.
The petition filed by CDPI which is the subsidiary of Actial, a leading Italian pharmaceutical company through the chairman of Kochhar & Co law firm Rohit Kochhar and senior partner Krishna Vijay Singh also sought the court's direction to examine the case record and to set aside the investigation conducted in collusion with the accused.
The petitioner also sought court's direction to the CBI to register an FIR under Section 217, 218, 219, and 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against Stefano Bagianti and accused persons - Claudio De Simone and accused Kanwaldeep Singh Chadha for conspiring in order to enable Bagianti to gain unlawful access to the entire case file during the investigation and illegally influencing the probe.
When the matter came up before the court, the petitioner through his counsel senior advocate Rajiv Nayyar and advocate Rohit Kochhar while referring to a letter of Bagianti stated that the same reveals that he had visited India in July, 2019 and had met with the police officials and was shown case diaries.
"The closure report now has been filed in this case. It is stated per Section 172 (3) CrPC that the case diary cannot be shown either to accused or to his counsel/agent and thus showing case diaries to the counsel is an illegal act," the counsel for the petitioner submitted.
Nayyar was aggrieved of the fact the closure report has been filed by the EOW before the Magistrate and the Metropolitan Magistrate (MM) may not take cognizance upon such report and direct closure of investigation.
However, Delhi government senior Standing Counsel (Criminal) Rahul Mehra assured that he would instruct his prosecutor appearing on behalf of the state before the magistrate to inform the petitioner about hearing of the closure proceedings.
The court has asked Mehra to get the reply signed by the DCP, EOW and serve an advance copy of the same to the counsel of the petitioner.