Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was acquitted by a local court in Nagpur on Friday in a case pertaining to his alleged failure to disclose criminal cases against him, reported PTI.
A Nagpur-based advocate and social activist Satish Uke had filed an application seeking criminal proceedings against the BJP leader alleging that cases of cheating and forgery had been registered against Fadnavis in 1996 and 1998, but he did not disclose this information in his poll affidavit in 2014.
The deputy Chief Minister was present in the court via video conference.
Civil Judge SS Jadhav acquitted Fadnavis noting that there was no intention on his part to not disclose the relevant information.
In April, Fadnavis, who served as the CM from 2014 to 2019 had submitted to the court that the non-disclosure of the relevant information was an inadvertent mistake on part of his previous lawyer while collating information about pending criminal cases against him due to which two criminal matters were not mentioned in his election affidavit submitted in 2014.
He had said, in his statement submitted on April 15, that there was no intention to deliberately conceal information about the two “insignificant” complaint cases and their non-inclusion in the affidavit of Form 26 was “sheer inadvertence” and “without any intention”.
The MLA from Nagpur South West assembly constituency had appeared before the court on two occasions to record his statement.
In 2014, when Uke’s complaint was heard for first time, the civil court had ruled against Fadnavis, but the verdict was later quashed by the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court. The advocate then challenged the HC order before the Supreme Court which held that a case was made for the prosecution of the BJP leader.
The apex court set aside the judgment of the HC and remanded the matter for trial afresh. In 2020, Fadnavis had filed a review petition against this order, which the top court had dismissed.
In April last year, Satish Uke, a vocal critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP, along with his elder brother Pradeep Uke, a former policeman, were arrested in an over Rs 11.5 crore money laundering case connected with a land grab case in Nagpur.
In August, Satish Uke, who is still in the Arthur Road jail in Mumbai, was booked, along with six others, under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA). The Nagpur Police has registered 13 cases against Uke and his brothers so far, Commissioner of Police Amitesh Kumar told Hindustan Times.