By IANS
New Delhi : The Delhi High Court Friday dismissed a petition filed by underworld don Babloo Srivastava seeking a direction to the government not to try him in any other case except in those for which he was extradited from Singapore in 1995.
Justice S.N. Dhingra said: “The petitioner’s prayer for relief that there should be no further violation of the extradition warrant and no trial of any case should take place is a ‘speculative relief’ sought by him.”
Dhingra also dismissed the prayer of the underworld don lodged in a Uttar Pradesh jail for compensation of Rs.1 billion for facing trials in contravention of his extradition terms.
The petition did not mention about any other case for which he was likely to be tried, the court said.
Srivastava, extradited to India from Singapore in 1995 to face trial in four cases of murder and kidnapping, said that the central government was breaking its undertaking for a fair trial alleging that many more cases had been slapped on him in the past 12 years.
Babloo alias Om Prakash Srivastava said that the Singapore Court had allowed his extradition on the basis of an undertaking by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that the petitioner would be given a fair trial in India.
He alleged that the prosecuting agency was adopting delaying tactics to keep him in jail without a trial in many cases and said that the trial in a murder case in Kanpur was started only on the direction of the apex Court.
Even in the Kanpur case, the prosecution has taken several adjournments leading to strictures passed by the sessions court against it, he alleged.
He had also requested the court to declare his extradition request as “illegal”, accusing the central government of flouting the terms on which he was deported from Singapore.
The government’s counsel, on the other hand, opposed his plea stating that extradition was a diplomatic process between the two countries and the judiciary had no right to intervene.
He further said that the trials in a number of cases were complete and a few were yet to be completed. He also wondered why the issue was being raised now, more than a decade after Srivastava’s arrival from Singapore.
The High Court had earlier also dismissed a similar petition saying that Srivastava could be tried for all alleged offences.