JAIPUR: The Rajasthan high court has issued notice to Union minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat over a 2020 audio clip about alleged horse-trading of MLAs after a revolt by then Congress deputy CM Sachin Pilot and his loyalists against CM Ashok Gehlot.
The HC issued the notice Friday on a petition by the Gehlot government asking why the state’s anti-corruption bureau (ACB) should not be allowed to take Shekhawat’s voice sample for its probe into the viral clip.It is alleged that the clip contains the voices of Shekhawat and Sanjay Jain, an alleged middleman arrested in the case earlier. The HC had earlier issued notices to Shekhawat, but the notice was not served.
Moving the government’s petition, additional advocate-general Ghanshyam Singh Rathore told the HC that a lower court had wrongly rejected the application of ACB to take Shekhawat’s voice samples. “The same provision….is applicable in taking blood and handwriting samples. The agency can take voice samples even without arresting,” Rathore argued.