Plea in SC for CBI probe against Raje and son in alleged land scam

NEW DELHI: After the ebbing of the political stand-off between Congress and BJP over Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje and her son Dushyant Singh allegedly grabbing government land, a petition in the Supreme Court on Tuesday sought to stoke the controversy by seeking a CBI probe into the issue.
The petitioners – Ram Singh Kaswan and Srijana Shreshtha – alleged that Raje, her husband Hemant Singh and Dushyant “entered into a criminal conspiracy and by using political clout have sought to embezzle and usurp properties belonging to the state of Rajasthan”.
The petition filed through advocate Devadatt Kamat alleged that the trio adopted an “ingenuous modus operandi to obtain a fraudulent consent decree granting/conveying the said state properties to themselves as a result of which properties worth thousands of crores of rupees have changed hand from state to private hands”.
“A compromise application dated May 10, 2007 came to be filed by Dushyant Singh in civil suit 18/2005 against Hemant Singh and Vasundhara Raje in the court of additional district judge, Bharatpur. The compromise application purports to divide properties, which do not belong to aforesaid parties and as a matter of fact which were state properties, between private parties to the suit.
“The compromise application was a camouflage device to usurp the state properties by mutual partition between parties to the suit which is impermissible in law,” the petitioners said, adding that through this method, the respondents usurped Dholpur City Palace, adjoining land around Dholpur Palace, Udaibhan Singh Malvindra Kaur Trust properties and Panchsheel Marg property in Delhi.
The petitioners said the HC erred in holding that no case was made out against the respondents for a CBI probe into the alleged usurpation of state government properties and requested the apex court to order a through investigation into the conspiracy by which the state property fell into the hands of private parties.