The bench of Justices Revati Mohite Dere and Prithviraj Chavan of the Bombay High Court on Monday recused from hearing five petitions filed by “Matka Queen” Jaya Chheda as it realised that Justice Chavan, who was a sessions judge earlier, had recorded evidence of some persons associated with a case related to Chheda.
Advocate Taraq Sayyed appearing for Chheda however pointed out that no judgment had been passed by Justice Chavan when he dealt with the cases earlier.
Justice Chavan was a Judge of the City Civil and Sessions Court in Bombay between March 2012 and February 2014, when he dealt with several matters as a Special Judge under MCOCA, POTA and NIA.
However, the bench said that when a judge had dealt with a case some way or the other earlier, then it would not be proper for them to preside over the case now.
The petitions had been specially assigned to Justice Dere’s bench after the bench headed by Justice AS Gadkari had recused from hearing the petitions.
Chheda had initially filed 16 petitions seeking the quashing of 16 FIRs that were registered between April 13, 2022, and 30 June 2022 under various provisions of the Maharashtra Prevention of Gambling Act.
Sayyed pointed out that all the FIRs were registered in a span of two months at different police stations with all the accused names also appearing in the same sequence and thus alleged that all the FIRs were copies of each other and were filed by policemen to extort money from her.
He submitted that the prosecution has stated during an earlier hearing that some police officers are also facing departmental enquiries for registering these FIRs to allegedly extort money.
During the hearing, Sayyed also submitted that in 10 FIRs out of 16, the prosecution during an earlier hearing has already made a statement that there is no material to support the case.
He submitted that in one more case, the police had already stated that they would not be filing a chargesheet. Thus, Sayyad was now only pursuing five petitions seeking quashing of five FIRs.
Now Sayyad will have to mention the petitions before another bench of the high court.
In all these 16 FIRs Chheda had been granted anticipatory bail. Chheda was earlier convicted to life imprisonment for the murder of Matka King and her estranged husband Suresh Bhagat and six others in an orchestrated accident in 2008. She was later granted bail in that murder case as well.