The Karnataka High Court sought responses from Lokayukta police, Enforcement Directorate and Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on a plea challenging closure of the MUDA corruption case. The petition contests a trial court’s acceptance of the closure report.
BENGALURU: The Karnataka High Court sought responses from the Karnataka Lokayukta police, the Enforcement Directorate (ED), Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and others to a challenge against the closure of the MUDA corruption case involving Siddaramaiah, his wife and two others.
Justice S Sunil Dutt Yadav issued notice on the petition filed by activist Snehamayi Krishna, who has contested a Bengaluru trial court’s decision to accept the Lokayukta police’s closure report.
The MUDA (Mysuru Urban Development Authority) scam alleges that Siddaramaiah abused his official position to facilitate irregular allotment of certain land to his wife, BM Parvathi. Snehamayi Krishna originally lodged the complaint, and in July 2024 the Governor of Karnataka granted sanction to prosecute Siddaramaiah.
The Lokayukta police probed the matter and submitted a closure report (B report) to the trial court in February 2025. That report was initially kept in abeyance to allow further inquiry into other alleged irregularities in MUDA allotments. In January this year, however, the trial court accepted the closure report, concluding there was insufficient evidence to establish corruption against Siddaramaiah, BM Parvathi, Siddaramaiah’s brother-in-law Mallikarjuna Swamy, and landowner J Devaraj. The court said investigations into other accused persons in the case would continue.
Krishna has now appealed that trial court ruling to the High Court, arguing that the court erred in accepting the Lokayukta’s closure report with respect to Siddaramaiah, his wife, his brother-in-law and Devaraj.
The petition contends that,
“the trial court has failed to appreciate that the allegations in the present case are not in the nature of a private dispute but involve abuse of constitutional office, and therefore required a deeper and independent scrutiny rather than mechanical reliance on the opinion of the investigating agency.”
The petition further asserts that the trial court “selectively” accepted closure reports against some accused while ordering continued probes against others, despite recognizing certain irregularities and loss to the State exchequer. According to the petition, this amounts to a jurisdictional error and creates a “fundamental inconsistency in the trial court order.”
The petition was filed through advocates Vasantha Kumara and Nishanth SK. Separately, Snehamayi Krishna’s request for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the MUDA case remains pending before a Division Bench of the High Court.
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