Special high court bench to hear Jayalalithaa's DA case on 5 Jan

Bengaluru: A special bench of the Karnataka High Court will hear, from 5 Jan, the corruption case against former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa and her three aides on a daily basis. Though the case came up for hearing on Friday before Justice H Billappa, Jayalalithaa’s counsel sought its postponement to Monday, as Justice CR Kumaraswamy, who has been appointed to hear it, is on leave till Saturday. [caption id=“attachment_2028315” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  AFP[/caption] Chief Justice DH Waghela on Thursday set up the single judge bench, as directed by the Supreme Court 18 Dec to hear the appeals of Jayalalithaa and her three associates to expeditiously decide their plea within three months. The other three are VK Sasikala, VN Sudhakaran and J Ilavarasi. The apex court had also 18 Dec extended the three month bail period of Jayalalithaa by another four months in the Rs 66.65 crore disproportionate assets case, in which a Central Bureau of Investigation special court Sept 27 sentenced her to four years simple imprisonment along with Rs 100 crore fine. The three co-accused were also sentenced to four years simple imprisonment but with a fine of Rs 10 crore each. Complying with the apex court’s 17 Oct order, Jayalalithaa’s counsel submitted to the high court Dec 8 all the relevant documents, running into a whopping 215,000 pages in 686 volumes. The apex court had also 17 Oct granted bail to Jayalalithaa and the others on their appeal against the high court’s 7 Oct verdict, which refused to release them on bail from the Bengaluru central jail during the pendency of their appeals. The criminal appeals seek to quash the special court’s orders, which convicted and sentenced all the four accused, not to collect the penalty amount, return the confiscated property and grant them bail till the case was disposed of by the higher courts. IANS