The High Court of Karnataka has faulted a special court for abandoning the course of ordering a Lokayukta police investigation into allegations of illegal allotment of a civic amenities site in Bengaluru to a trust of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s family and instead conducting an inquiry on its own under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023, solely because of technical defects in the complainant’s affidavit.
Justice M. Nagaprasanna passed the order while partly allowing a petition filed by Vijayaraghava Marathe, State president of Lanchamuktha Karnataka Vedike, Bengaluru. The petitioner had challenged the special court’s August 11 order of taking up the inquiry by itself under Section 223 of BNSS instead of considering his plea for a probe by the Lokayukta police.
The special court had declined to proceed under Section 175(3) due to a “defective affidavit” filed by the complainant, which lacked proper verification as required under Section 333(2) of the BNSS. The special court concluded that without a valid affidavit, it could not order investigation and thus resorted to conducting its own inquiry.
However, the High Court held that infirmity in the affidavit of the complainant is a “curable defect” as even non-filing of an affidavit itself has been held as a “curable defect” by the apex court while stating that the special court must afford the complainant an opportunity to cure defects before passing orders on merit.
The complaint alleges serious irregularities in the allotment of a civic amenity site, measuring 8,002 sq. m. in BTM 4th Stage, Bengaluru, in 2010 to the Siddartha Vihar Trust — a charitable trust of Mallikarjun Kharge, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, his wife Radhabai M. Kharge, son-in-law Radhakrishna, sons Rahul M. Kharge and Priyank M. Kharge, presently the Home Minister in the Karnataka government.
According to the complainant, the trust, despite having secular objectives “for the benefit of all persons irrespective of caste, creed, religion, sex or colour”, allegedly projected itself as a Scheduled Caste (SC) institution to secure a 50% concession in the lease amount from the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) in 2009 and obtained an alternative site valued at approximately ₹130 crore at BTM layout in 2010 in lieuof the site allotted earlier at Banashankari 6th Stage Layout during 2009.
The complainant alleged that the trustees used their influence to expedite the allotment process, which was completed within an unusually short period of 10 days. Mr. Marathe had filed a complaint before the special court in 2025 as the jurisdictional police and the Superintendent of Police, Lokayukta Police, did not act on his complaints.
Though the High Court did not express its opinion on the merits of allegations against the trust, it said that “an inquiry by the trial court cannot be made a substitute for investigation where the investigation itself is indispensable to discover the evidence” particularly in corruption cases against public servants as complainants cannot lay hands to all materials that are available in official records.
The questions — who processed the application for the civic amenity site? On what basis was the trust treated as falling within the SC category? What were the notings in the official files? Does the official record corroborate or demolish the allegations? — are all matters lying beyond the reach of the complainant, the High Court said.
Answers to these questions “lie buried, if at all, in official records and in the circumstances surrounding official decision-making. Their excavation is the province of investigation, not merely of an enquiry by the court”, Justice Nagaprasanna observed, while directing the special court to pass a fresh order by following the procedure under Section 175 of BNSS.
