BENGALURU: A special court which recently framed charges against former minister G Janardhana Reddy, two Congress MLAs and 18 others in an illegal mining case has dropped the charge of ‘criminal breach of trust by public servant’ (IPC Section 409) against the mining baron.The court, set up to deal exclusively with criminal cases related to elected MPs and MLAs of Karnataka, began trial on Saturday.The anti-corruption branch of the CBI has accused Reddy of illegally extracting huge quantities of iron ore, stocked it in unapproved stockyards and transported and trade d it without valid permits. The CBI claims Reddy did this when he was minister in charge of Ballari district. The investigative agency also claims Reddy colluded with two forest officials and one mines and geology department official who allowed 17 individuals and entities, including Congress MLAs Anand Singh from Vijayanagar and B Nagendra from Kudligi, to illegally extract ore.Judge B V Patil agreed that though accused No. 1 Reddy was a public servant, he was not entrusted with forest and mineral resources in Ballari nor was forests and minerals under his domain. Therefore, the judge ruled, he was not liable to be charged with “criminal breach of trust by public servant”. The judge said the three accused officials — then forest conservators S Muthaiah and Manojo Kumar Shukla and deputy director S P Raju — will continue to face charges for offences under IPC section 409.The ore was exported from Belekeri port in Uttara Kannada district from where it was exported. The accused, including six companies, have been charged with causing a loss of Rs 198 crore to the state exchequer.The CBI’s Anti-Corruption Bureau registered a case against the accused in 2012 and charges were framed against the accused on August 8, 2018, paving the way for commencement of the trial.The other accused in the case are Reddy’s personal assistant K Mehfuz Ali Khan; K V Nagaraj alias Swastik Nagaraj; Kenche Mahesh Kumar alias Karadapudi Mahesh; S Murali; Chittala Srinivasa Reddy; Muthyala Shivakumar; Idli Yarriswami; Shyamraj Singh; K Janardhana Reddy, S B Logistics, Eagle Traders and Logistics, Vyshnavi Minerals, SVK Minerals, Jambunatheswara Minerals and Sri Lakshmi Venkateshwara Minerals.

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