National Herald case: SC sends Swamy packing to HC

The Supreme Court today redirected the legally active Bharatiya Janata Party member Subramanian Swamy to make his case in the Delhi High Court for a speedy trial in the National Herald case.

The hearing on the case had earlier been adjourned due to the absence of one of the Congress party lawyers.

A bench of Justices V Gopala Gowda and R Banumathi asked Swamy how he could approach the apex court under Article 32 of the Constitution seeking an early hearing of the Congress leaders' plea in the matter, ''without exhausting the remedies in the high court", as his fundamental rights were not affected.

Swamy has accused the Congress president and vice president, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by paying just Rs50 lakh, by which Young Indian (YI) obtained the right to recover the Rs90.25 crore, which the Associated Journals Limited (AJL) had owed to the Congress Party.

Swamy has alleged that over Rs2,000 crore worth of assets also got transferred to YI, in which Sonia  Gandhi owns 76 per cent and Rahul holds the remaining 24 per cent.

Swamy told the apex court that the matter was in the nature of public interest, but the bench asked him to go back to the high court.

Besides the Gandhis, party treasurer Moti Lal Vora, former union minister Oscar Fernandes and Gandhi family friend Suman Dubey had moved the high court seeking quashing of the summons issued to them by a trial court on a complaint by Swamy.