New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday, September 22, refused to entertain two separate appeals of the Chhattisgarh government against orders of the high court granting a stay on investigation in an FIR registered against BJP leaders Raman Singh and Sambit Patra for their tweets alleging the presence of a Congress “toolkit” that intended to tarnish India’s image.A bench headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana and including Justices Surya Kant and Hima Kohli said they were not inclined to intervene in the special leave petition, LiveLaw has reported.“Let the Chhattisgarh high court decide the case. We know that in the entire country, there are people in different courts for stay, etc. in this toolkit business. Why should we give separate preference to this case,” the bench said.The FIR against Singh and Patra was filed by state president of Congress’s students’ wing National Student Union of India (NSUI), Akash Sharma, who alleged that Singh, Patra and some others had circulated a fabricated toolkit on COVID-19 using a forged letterhead of the Congress.The Chhattisgarh high court had, on June 11, 2021, passed two separate orders and granted interim relief in the same FIR lodged against Singh and Patra. It had noted, as The Wire had reported then, that the FIR smacked of political grudge and that allowing the investigation to continue will be “nothing but an abuse of law”.“Prima facie, no case is made out against the petitioner and criminal proceedings are manifestly attended against the petitioner with malafides or with political grudge,” LiveLaw had quoted the high court has having said.Raman Singh is former Chhattisgarh chief minister and BJP national vice-president, and Sambit Patra is a BJP spokesperson.The Union government had objected to Twitter labelling as “manipulated media” Patra’s tweet containing screenshots of what he claimed was the Congress ‘toolkit’.Referring to the findings of the high court, Chhattisgarh government’s counsel Abhishek Manu Singhvi, assisted by lawyer Sumeer Sodhi, said, “What will the high court decide at this stage, look at the observations. Even if I go there, I must have a genuine hearing.”“The high court said the petitioners are political persons and recorded the findings that no case is made out,” he said, adding, “Now what is left for me to go back for.”The bench, however, said: “Don’t waste your energy here. We are not inclined to interfere. Let the High Court decide the matter expeditiously. The SLPs (special leave petitions) are dismissed. Let the observations not come in the way of deciding the case on merits.”The apex court requested the Chhattisgarh HC to decide expeditiously the pleas related to the case.Case against interim relief and quashingEarlier, the state government, through lawyer Sumeer Sodhi, had moved the top court against the high court orders granting stay of investigation in an FIR registered against the BJP leaders.In its appeal against the order in Raman Singh case, the state government said that on June 11 at the stage of admission, the high court not only admitted the frivolous petition but also erroneously granted an interim relief sought by Raman Singh by staying the investigation arising out of the FIR.It sought setting aside of the orders on the ground that the top court has time and again held that extraordinary powers of the high court under Article 226 of the constitution ought to be used sparingly and in rarest of rare cases.The state government has further said that the high court erred in exercising such powers and staying the entire investigation as a nascent stage especially when ex-facie offence of forgery is made out and is writ large.The state government further said that the defence of the accused ought not to be looked at the stage of quashing; however, in the present case the high court seems to have been wrongly swayed by the submission of the accused that he was not the author of the document and further that one ‘Team Bharat’ was the actual author of the document.It said that the impugned order is ex-facie illegal, perverse and in stark derogation of the settled principles of law vis-a-vis the powers of the high court to interfere at the nascent stage of investigation, therefore, deserves to be set aside.The state government took similar grounds in the appeal filed in the case of Sambit Patra and sought setting aside of the order.(With PTI inputs)