Monday, March 14 2005 14:33 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: The special court set up in Bangalore, under the directions of the Supreme Court, today (Mar 14, 2005) commenced trial of the Rs 66.65 crore disproportionate asset cases filed against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa and four others and adjourned the further hearing to March 28.

Judge A S Pachhapure, granted exemption from personal appearance before the court to Jayalalithaa, Sashikala Natarajan, Ilavarasi and T V Dinakaran after the counsels for the accused led by N Jyoti filed applications to this effect.

V N Sudhakaran (A-3), one of the accused was present before the court. Jena Senan, appearing for Dinakaran in the London Hotel case, besides filing an application seeking exemption for his client's personal appearance on the ground that he was attending the Rajya Sabha session, also moved another for clubbing both the cases for conducting the trial.

Pachhapure said that he would hear the application on March 28 and asked the public prosecutor B V Acharya to put forth his views on the issue on the next date of hearing.

The Judge also directed the court staff to furnish the documents translated into English from Tamil on March 28.

Earlier when Jyoti moved applications on behalf of Jayalalithaa and Sashikala for exempting them from personal appearance, the Judge wanted to know whether the public prosecutor had any objections.

Jyoti arguing on the two applications praying for exemption from personal appearance by Jayalalithaa and Sashikala submitted that it was only a transferred case and the orders of the Madras High Court in this regard were still in operation.

He said that since the identification of the accused was not in dispute, there was nothing that bars the court from granting the exemption.

Judge Pachhapure expressed in favour of adjourning the hearing to March 24, but Jyoti said that he and other counsels appearing for the accused wanted time to study the translated version of the documents and compare them with the original.

About 76 key witnesses are likely to be cross-examined during the trial and the case has more than 3000 exhibits including jewellery and voluminous 15,000 pages of translated documents.

Acharya also pleaded the court for the copies of the documents like deposition copies and exhibits of documents to decide on the number of witnesses to be recalled for cross-examination.

Evidence from about 256 persons has been recorded earlier in these two cases.

Karnataka set up the special court appointing Pachhapure as judge to try the cases in September 2004 after the Supreme Court rejected Jayalalithaa's petition seeking transfer of the cases from Karnataka to other States including Pondicherry.

Jayalalithaa in her petition before the Supreme Court had contended that she might not get fair trial in Karnataka in the wake of a running dispute between the State and Tamil Nadu over the issue of sharing the cauvery river water.