Mulayam Singh Yadav files affidavit in SC claiming innocence in DA case

Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court on Thursday, claiming innocence in a disproportionate assets case against him and his sons Akhilesh and Prateek Yadav.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta will take up the case tomorrow.

In the previous hearing on March 25, the apex court had issued notice to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and asked the agency to file its reply within two weeks on advocate Vishwanath Chaturvedi's petition seeking a status report on the probe.

In his affidavit, Mulayam Singh Yadav claimed that during the preliminary probe carried out by the CBI, the agency had prima facie given him a clean chit since no evidence was found against him.

Chaturvedi's petition has said that the agency has "utterly failed" to intimate either the apex court or report to the jurisdictional magistrate in respect of the probe done and its status.

It has alleged that Mulayam Singh Yadav had amassed disproportionate assets amounting to over Rs 100 crore during his tenure as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh between 1999 and 2005.

The plea filed in February has said the CBI has taken a long time to complete the preliminary enquiry in the matter which has been probed since 2007.

"In the judgment delivered by this court on December 13, 2012 in review petitions, this court had left it completely to the CBI how the enquiry is to be proceeded with. This court went to hold that the CBI is an independent agency and is not bound to share the reports with the Union of India. Almost six years have lapsed since the review order and 11 long years since the writ order...," the plea has contended

In 2005, Chaturvedi had filed a petition in the apex court seeking a CBI probe against Mulayam Singh Yadav, his sons Akhilesh and Prateek Yadav and daughter-in-law Dimple Yadav under the Prevention of Corruption Act for allegedly acquiring assets more than their known sources of income.