Mulayam files affidavit in Disproportionate Asset case

Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav on Thursday filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court stating that he and his sons, Akhilesh and Prateek, were innocent and had been falsely implicated in a disproportionate assets case.

Mulayam Singh Yadav claimed that no evidence had been found against him and his sons in the preliminary probe of the CBI. In fact, the agency had prima facie given him a clean chit, he said.

A division bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Deepak Gupta will hear the case on Friday.

In the last hearing on March 25, the Supreme Court issued a notice to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and directed it to reply within two weeks whether a case had been registered against the alleged accumulation of disproportionate assets by the Yadavs.

The apex court order came on a plea filed by advocate Vishwanath Chaturvedi in February seeking a status report on the probe against the Yadavs. Chaturvedi's plea contended that the CBI's preliminary probe in the case had been on since 2007, which was a very long time.

The plea also alleged that the SP founder had amassed disproportionate assets in excess of Rs 100 crore during his tenure as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh between 1999 and 2005.

In 2005, Chaturvedi had moved the Supreme Court seeking a CBI probe against Mulayam Singh Yadav, his sons Akhilesh Yadav 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.

In December 2012, the apex court directed the CBI to go ahead with the probe against Mulayam Singh Yadav and his then Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister-cum-son Akhilesh while dropping the investigation against Dimple.

--IANS

ss/rtp/mr