New Delhi: A whistle blower, who exposed the illegal racket of unscrupulous lawyers in Gujarat procuring arrest warrants in early 90s through a sting operation, finally got a relief from the SC on Wednesday for a time-bound disposal of seven criminal cases against him and his family members. The Bench of Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna ordered disposal of two cases by the trial courts in Vadodara and Dabhoi in Vadodara district within six months and ordered a six-week stay on the five cases before the Gujarat HC to let the victim move court for quashing the criminal proceedings against him.
The court took note of the sting operation petitioner Manohar M Galani got conducted by a journalist in getting the arrest warrants issued by a judicial magistrate of Dakor in Gujarat in 1993-94 against a sitting judge of the Bombay HC, the then Maharashtra Home Minister and the three MLAs. The arrest warrants were quashed by the Nadiad sessions court after the racket was splashed in the newspapers. Galani, a former employee of the Punjab National Bank, approached the apex court pleading how he and his family members were arrested on the basis of bogus arrest warrants, and they are still facing seven of the criminal cases even after 25 years.
One civil and nine criminal cases were slapped on him and his family members by one Kishore Keswani after a loss of Rs13 lakh in the 1993 sharemarket crash in the investments he had made through Jubilee Capital Marketing Services run by his sister from Ulhasnagar near Mumbai. Seven of these cases still survive making his life miserable, he contended in the petition.
The apex court directed the HC to dispose of the criminal cases once Galani appeals for quashing the proceedings while asking the two trial courts to issue notices to the complainants and issue notices to Galani only if they appear before them and want to pursue the complaints. In such a case, the cases should be disposed in not later than six months, the Court held.
