HC to Hear Plea by Former Haryana CM Against Conviction in Disproportionate Assets Case

The Delhi High Court will hear on Monday a plea by former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala against his conviction and four-year sentence in a disproportionate assets (DA) case. The high court had, earlier this month, called for the 87-year-old INLD leader’s jail records to decide the issue of his release during the pendency of the appeal.

Justice Yogesh Khanna had also issued notice to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Chautala’s appeal against his conviction and sentencing as well as on his plea for suspension of the sentence imposed by the trial court. Chautala, who has been Haryana’s chief minister five times for varying periods, has urged the high court to suspend the sentence of four years, claiming that he has already spent five years in prison in connection with the case.

He has challenged the trial court order on the grounds that the trial and the conviction were based on two different quanta of disproportionate assets. On May 27, Special Judge Vikas Dhull convicted Chautala and awarded a four-year jail term to him while also imposing a fine of Rs 50 lakh in the case of acquiring disproportionate assets from 1993 to 2006.

The trial court had also directed the authorities concerned to confiscate four of his properties. While convicting Chautala, the trial court had said the accused had failed to satisfactorily account for such dis-proportionality by proving his source of income or means by way of which he acquired assets during this period.

The CBI had registered the case in 2000 and a charge sheet was filed on March 26, 2010, accusing him of amassing assets disproportionate to his legitimate income, between 1993 and 2006. According to the CBI’s FIR, Chautala, while functioning as chief minister of Haryana from July 24, 1999, to March 5, 2005, in collusion with his family members and others, accumulated assets, immovable and movable, disproportionate to his known lawful sources of income, in his name and in the names of his family members.

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