Rajasthan High Court accepts ACB’s closure report in government toppling case

The Rajasthan High Court has accepted a closure report of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in a case alleging a conspiracy to topple the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government in 2020. The ACB has exonerated two businessmen accused of bribing the MLAs to pull down the government.

The ACB stated in its closure report that there was no evidence of bribery, horse-trading, or political conspiracy in the intercepted phone calls which formed the basis of the case. “There was no discussion [in the phone calls] on bribing the MLAs to topple the democratically elected government,” the report said.

A Single Judge Bench of Justice Ashutosh Kumar quashed the case against businessmen Ashok Singh and Bharat Malani on Monday (September 15, 2025), based on the ACB’s closure report. The two persons were arrested by the Special Operations Group (SOG) of Rajasthan police on July 11, 2020, on the basis of three call recordings.

Mr. Singh and Mr. Malani, who moved the High Court challenging the first information report, were arrested on charges of attempting to bribe three independent legislators and one Congress MLA ahead of the Rajya Sabha election to destabilise the Gehlot government. They were later booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act when the ACB took over the matter.

The ACB said the tussle between Chief Minister Mr. Gehlot and the then Deputy CM Sachin Pilot was among the things discussed in the phone calls. Other issues which figured in the calls included the COVID-19 pandemic and China-Pakistan geopolitics.

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Mr. Pilot led a rebellion of 18 Congress MLAs against Mr. Gehlot in July 2020, leading to a month-long political crisis in the State. He was later sacked as both the Deputy CM and the Pradesh Congress president with an accusation that he was colluding with Bharatiya Janata Party in its conspiracy to topple the State government.

The SOG, which had initially registered the case, had issued a notice to Mr. Pilot to record his statement in connection with the matter. The government chief whip had filed complaints with the SOG and ACB seeking an inquiry into the case ahead of Rajya Sabha elections.

Mr. Gehlot had repeatedly blamed the BJP for trying to topple his government, like in Madhya Pradesh and other States, by offering crores of rupees to the legislators, though the BJP rejected the charge as baseless. The BJP returned to power in the State three years later, in 2023.

The ACB said in its report that the bank accounts of Mr. Singh and Mr. Malani did not point to any suspicious transactions. Both of them were released on bail in August 2020 after the removal of the sedition charges from the FIR.