Herald case: Court allows Swamy's plea to summon INC documents

A Delhi court on Friday allowed a plea by Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy and summoned certain documents pertaining to financial details of Indian National Congress for the year 2010-2011 in the National Herald case.

Metropolitan Magistrate Lovleen partly allowed Swamy's plea in which he had sought summoning of documents related to financial details of INC, Associated Journals Pvt Ltd and Young Indian Pvt Ltd in connection with the case.

Besides INC's documents for the year 2010-2011, the court also summoned AJL's documents for the same assessment year.

"I am partly allowing your application," the magistrate said while pronouncing the order.

Swamy had sought summoning of these documents contending that they were required for the purpose of investigation in the National Herald case. He had referred to the court's June 26, 2014 order summoning Congress President Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul Gandhi, Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda as accused in the case.

Swamy, the complainant in the matter, had said that sufficient grounds for summoning these documents were mentioned in June 26, 2014 order.

The court had heard his contentions on summoning the balance sheet, receipts, income and expenditure statements for the assessment years 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13 of  the INC, AJL and YI.

Swamy had accused Sonia, Rahul and others of allegedly conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by just paying Rs 50 lakh by which YI obtained the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore which the AJL had owed to the Congress party.

On February 20, the court had directed that some documents summoned from the Ministries of Finance, Urban Development and Corporate Affairs, Income Tax Department and other agencies in the case would be kept in a sealed cover till further orders, after noting that Delhi high court was seized of the matter.

The direction had come after the accused in the case had argued that Swamy should first satisfy the court about the relevance of the documents which were ordered to be summoned.

The court had on December 19, 2015, granted bail to Sonia, Rahul, Vora, Fernandes and Dubey, who had appeared before it pursuant to the summons issued earlier. Pitroda was  granted bail on February 20 when he had appeared in the court.

Sonia, Rahul, Vora (AICC treasurer), Fernandes (AICC general secretary), Dubey and Pitroda were summoned for alleged offences under section 403 (dishonest misappropriation of property), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) read with section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.