Kerala High Court declined interim relief against the FIR order in the alleged CMRL bribery case. The bench said it must first decide whether the appeals can be entertained.
Stock photo used for illustration
Kochi,Oct 13, 2026 16:26 IST
The Kerala High Court on Tuesday declined to grant an interim stay on a single judge's direction to the Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) to register an FIR against former Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and others in the alleged CMRL bribery case.
A division bench of Justices K Natarajan and Johnson John said it would first have to decide the applications seeking permission to appeal against the October 9 order before considering the request for a stay. The bench also reserved its order on those applications.
The court was hearing applications filed by Vijayan, his daughter Veena T and her husband P A Mohamed Riyas, who are seeking permission to appeal against the single judge's order. The bench said, "Then the petitions have to be numbered, admitted and then only stay can be considered. That is the procedure."
Earlier, during the pre-lunch hearing, the bench asked the state government why it had ordered a preliminary enquiry when the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had already given information to the state police regarding alleged offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act against Vijayan, Veena and Riyas in connection with the case.
Advocate General Jaju Babu told the bench that the government had ordered a preliminary enquiry because it wanted to verify the allegations in the information shared by the ED, as a lot of other material linked to the matter had not been given by the agency to the state police.
In their appeals, Vijayan, Veena and Riyas said they were not heard by the single judge before the October 9 direction to register the FIR was issued. The bench also asked the appellants why they had not challenged the FIR since it had already been registered.
The court further asked whether an accused or a proposed accused must always be heard before an FIR is registered against them in a criminal matter. The lawyers for the appellants argued that they should have been heard because the court was dealing with a writ petition and its order would affect them.
"It was not a case of a police officer registering an FIR in the routine course," the lawyers for the appellants said. They also argued that once the High Court had directed that an FIR be lodged, the appellants could not challenge it in the court.
The appellants also said the petition in which the single judge passed the order was in the nature of a public interest litigation and should therefore have been heard by a division bench that deals with PILs.
The appeals were filed after the VACB's Special Investigation Unit-1 on Monday registered two FIRs against Vijayan and his family members in connection with the alleged CMRL bribery case. On October 9, the Kerala High Court had directed that a case be registered on the basis of a report submitted by the ED to the state police.
The ED had sought registration of a case on the basis of evidence gathered during its investigation and searches conducted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. The agency has alleged that CMRL made fraudulent payments of Rs 2.78 crore to Veena's now-defunct company, Exalogic Solutions, under the guise of IT consultancy services.
With the bench reserving its order on the applications for permission to appeal, the matter now stands at the stage where the court must first decide whether the appeals can be taken up before it considers any interim relief against the direction to register the FIR.
- Ends