Maharashtra's Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on Thursday informed the Bombay high court that after conducting a preliminary probe it has decided not to file an FIR against Mumbai Congress chief Kripashankar Singh and his family in disproportionate assets case.

Advocate general Ravi Kadam said the ACB has laid down a criteria not to file an FIR in cases where disproportionate assets were up to 10 percent of known sources of income of the person concerned. In case of Singh and his wife Maltidevi, it was a little higher at 11.69 per cent. Hence, the agency had decided not to file an FIR.

After hearing arguments, a bench of chief justice Mohit Shah and Justice Roshan Dalvi reserved order till October 10 on a PIL seeking probe by a Special Investigation Team (SIT) into allegations that Singh, a former Maharashtra minister, and his family had "amassed unaccounted wealth".

Income tax department informed the court its officers were currently conducting assessment of income earned by Singh and his family in the past and that they were involved in tracing the source of funds possessed by them.

Enforcement Directorate (ED) said so far it had not gathered any material to show that money earned by the Congress leader and his family were proceeds of scheduled offences listed in the Money Laundering Act.

Mahesh Jethmalani, counsel for petitioner Sanjay Tiwari, alleged that the probe conducted by ACB was "perverse" and appealed to the court to form an SIT to probe the matter.

The HC had earlier asked these agencies to probe the allegations levelled in the PIL and register an FIR if they came across material to suggest assets owned by Singh and his family were disproportionate to known sources of income or money earned by them were proceeds of crime.

The advocate general said ACB had gone into all the alleged transactions mentioned in PIL and conducted an inquiry which revealed that the quantum of disproportionate assets owned by Singh's family was 5.63 per cent.

Even if assets of Singh and his wife were taken as one unit or separated from the rest of the family, the percentage of assets disproportionate to their sources of income was 11.69. This was marginally higher than the limit of 10 per cent decided by ACB for not launching prosecution. Hence, ACB decided not to file an FIR in this case, Kadam explained.

Jethmalani argued that ACB had not given Singh a clean chit and had indicted him and his wife for possessing assets disproportionate to known sources of income to the tune of 11.69 per cent. Hence, the agency should register an FIR.

However, Kadam and Additional Solicitor General Darius Khambata disagreed with the argument and said the petitioner was free to move a magistrate's court by filing a private complaint and seek direction to probe agencies to file an FIR.

The petitioner demanded copies of reports submitted by ACB and other agencies on status of probe. However, the agencies opposed the demand, saying they were privileged documents and meant only for the eyes of the court.

The high court would decide on this aspect also in its judgement after 10 days.

Earlier, the high court had rejected the plea of respondents that the PIL was not maintainable and decided to monitor probe by asking agencies to submit reports periodically.

The PIL alleged the Mumbai Congress chief had close relations with former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda, who had been booked in a multi-crore hawala scam, and claimed a lot of monetary transactions took place between them.

The PIL said Singh's son Narendra Mohan is married to Ankita, daughter of Kamlesh Singh, a Minister in the Koda Cabinet who has also been booked in the hawala scam.