Palmolein case; Supreme Court postpones hearing, expresses dissatisfaction

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has again postponed the hearing of various petitions seeking quashing of the Palmolein case. It has been postponed to be considered after the Christmas vacation. The Supreme Court had earlier clarified that there is no obstacle to continuing the trial in the case.

The Supreme Court was considering the petitions filed by former Chief Vigilance Commissioner P J Thomas, Congress leader T H Mustafa and former Chief Secretary G G Thompson. The petitions filed in 2012 came up for consideration by the court today. Since Mustafa is deceased, his petition was also removed from the court records.

P J Thomas's lawyer had requested the Supreme Court to postpone the hearing of the petition citing the inconvenience of the senior advocate. The court expressed dissatisfaction over the postponement of the petition, which has been pending before the court for a decade. The bench comprising Justices MM Sundaresh and Arvind Kumar postponed the hearing of the petition. The bench also clarified that the hearing of the case will not be postponed again.

The incident in question took place during 1991-92, when K Karunakaran was the Chief Minister. The case alleged corruption in the import of palm oil from a Malaysian company called Power and Energy Limited through a Singaporean company as an intermediary. The alleged corruption involved the import of 15,000 tonnes of palm oil. The charge brought against the accused, including K Karunakaran, is that the government lost Rs 2.8 crore in this transaction.