Karnataka High Court Allows State's Request To File Reply In Sealed Cover In Suo Moto Case On Bengaluru Stampede

The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday (June 10) permitted the State to bring its reply in a sealed cover to a suo motu plea initiated regarding the Bengaluru stampede which occurred last week outside Chinnaswamy stadium ahead of an event to celebrate Royal Challenger Bangalore's (RCB) victory at the 2025 IPL Final.The high court had taken suo motu cognizance of the incident on June 5, one day after the incident and had issued notice to the Karnataka Government to ascertain cause of the tragedy and how to prevent it in future. Reportedly 11 people lost their lives in the stampede while over 30 people are stated to have suffered injuries. RCB won the 2025 IPL Final defeating Punjab Kings on June 3, winning the coveted trophy for the first time, since the inception of the IPL in 2008.During the hearing today Advocate General Shashi Kiran Shetty submitted before a division bench of Acting Chief Justice and Justice CM Joshi that he has not filed the reply.He further said, "Judicial commission is set up and one month time is given to give report. Police officers are suspended. In the bail petitions pending, whatever is said here is being used by the accused there". At this stage the bench orally asked, "Are you saying that you will not reply to our directions?". The advocate general said, "Kindly keep it tomorrow milords we will file a reply. There are certain things".The court asked, "What is the difficulty in filing?". To this the advocate general said, "I do not want to put in open court, we would be prejudged milords. Let the report from an independent inquiry come and it should not be that we are bias. It is a matter of only one month milords". The court thereafter asked the advocate general to file the reply in a sealed cover. Meanwhile the advocate general said, "I mentioned about transfer of investigation to CID during the last hearing, it was transferred to CID during that day, they are using it in the bail petitions". The court however said, "You file your reply in sealed cover by day after". It thereafter in its order dictated, "The Registrar General of HC has filed WP in terms of our last order dated June 5. Mr Shetty learned Advocate General would submit that he intends to file reply in sealed cover, he is permitted to do so on or before by Thursday. Registrar General shall ensure that reply is kept in safe custody". At this stage the court said, "You (State) bring it to court on that day. That would be better". It further said to the counsel present in court, "Let their replies come, we are not saying anything right now. We will look into the impleading applications. We say nothing on the submission made".The matter is now listed on Thursday. Case title: SUO MOTU v/s THE STATE OF KARNATAKAWP 16530/2025

Karnataka High Court Allows State's Request To File Reply In Sealed Cover In Suo Moto Case On Bengaluru Stampede

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