Anticipatory bail for BSY in another graft case

BANGALORE: The Karnataka High Court Monday granted anticipatory bail to scam-hit former state chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa and his kin in a case related to illegal allotment of a prime housing site in the city to his relative for pecuniary gain.Grating conditional bail, Justice H. Billappa directed Yeddyurappa, his two sons B.Y. Raghavendra and B.Y. Vijayendra and his son-in-law R.N. Sohan Kumar to furnish Rs.2 lakh bond and two sureties of same amount each with the court.Raghavendra is the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Lok Sabha member from Shimoga constituency, about 280 km from here.The accused were also ordered not to leave the country without the court's permission and not to tamper with the evidence in the graft case or influence witnesses.The case was filed in the special Lokayukta (ombudsman) court in January by two city advocates - Sirajin Basha and K.N. Balaraj -- after Governor H.R. Bhardwaj permitted Yeddyurappa's prosecution under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 and the Karnataka Lokayukta Act, 1984 for flouting site allotment norms and causing loss to the state exchequer.According to the complaint, Yeddyurappa illegally allotted a site in the upscale south-east Bangalore to R.P. Shankar, maternal uncle of his son-in-law (Kumar), and allowed its transfer in the latter's name, thereby causing a revenue loss of Rs.1.92 crore to the state government for a pecuniary gain of Rs.1.87 crore to his family.This is the fifth graft case the duo (lawyers) filed against Yeddyurappa and his family though the other four cases deal with the irregularities committed in freeing prime lands in and around Bangalore from government control and selling them to beneficiaries at higher than market rates.Though Yeddyurappa was granted anticipatory bail by the same judge (Billappa) Nov 16 in two of the four land scam cases, he was jailed for 21 days from Oct 19 to Nov 8 after he was denied bail in two other cases.Observing that all the accused were ready to cooperate in the investigation and were already granted similar bail in two other related cases, the judge said if the bail conditions were violated, the complainants were free to approach the court for cancelling the bail.Yeddyurappa resigned July 31 as the BJP's first chief minister in south India after then ombudsman Justice (retd) N. Santosh Hegde recommended his trial for corruption in the multi-crore rupee mining scam in the state during his 38-month tenure from May 2008.