Chennai: Madras High Court today (Mar 4, 2003) disposed of a petition seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the alleged concealment of evidence by Tamil Nadu police and large scale printing and circulation of fake judicial paper in the State, following the State Government's decision to hand over inquiry into the allegations to the CBI.

The State Government in a counter affidavit filed in the High Court yesterday, in response to the petition filed by a city advocate S Subramaniam Balaji, had submitted that it had decided to entrust inquiry into the allegations to the CBI.

Disposing of the petition, a Division Bench, comprising Justice V S Sirpurkar and Justice F M Ibrahim Kallifulla, also took note of the submission by petitioner's counsel that the prayer in the petition had been met.

On the Government's contention in the affidavit that "the petitioner is liable to be prosecuted for filing a forged document", the Bench told the advocate general a separate petition could be filed under section 340 CRPC (Criminal Procedure Code) if the Government felt that a document submitted to the court was "forged".

The petitioner had contended that some senior officers of the state police were not interested in taking suitable action to eradicate the menace of fake judicial paper after receiving financial gratification.

Alleging "murky" dealings by some State police officers, the petitioner alleged that an IG of crime branch-CID, Amit Verma had demanded and received Rs 7.5 lakh from one Nizamuddin, an accomplice of Telgi, for allegedly handing back fake stamp paper worth Rs250 crore.

The Government had also termed as "forgery", a letter purportedly written by then SP of CB-CID Sandeep Rai Rathore, currently SP of Tuticorin District, to the Additional DGP of the State police to erase the name of Mohammad Ali from a complaint registered in January 2002.