The Bombay High court ordered an enquiry into how BJP leader Kirit Somaiya obtained a copy of an order passed by a magistrate in a case where former Maharashtra minister Hasan Mushrif is among the accused.
A division bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Sharmila Deshmukh directed the principal district judge of Pune to conduct the enquiry.
It was a serious matter to find out how somebody who is not a party to the proceedings got a judicial order copy without applying for a certified copy, the bench said.
The HC was hearing a plea filed by Mushrif, a Nationalist Congress Party leader, seeking the quashing of a First Information Report registered against him in Kolhapur for alleged cheating.
There was a deliberate attempt to implicate him in the Enforcement Directorate (ED) cases, he alleged. The petition also claimed that Somaiya got a copy of a summons issued by a magistrate against some accused in the case even though he was not a litigant.
The high court had earlier posted the matter for further hearing on March 24 and directed the Maharashtra police not to take any coercive action until then.
The FIR is related to alleged collection of money from the members of a cooperative sugar factory in western Maharashtra’s Kolhapur district.