PTI
 
New Delhi, Jan 13: The Supreme Court on Friday declined an urgent hearing to the petition challenging Governments stand before the British authorities to defreeze bank accounts of Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, who is an accused in the Bofors pay-off case.

When a plea was made by advocate Ajay Agarwal during the mentioning hour for early hearing before a Bench headed by Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal, he was directed to fulfil the technicalities in this regard.

The Petition, which was filed on Thursday with the registry was yet to be allocated with the Diary number.

"First get the petition registered and listed in the Mentioning List," the Bench said and even warned him not to refer to the newspaper reports when the counsel orally wanted to apprise the court of the incident which has evoked a political controversy.

He reminded the Bench that a petition filed by him challenging the High Court verdict discharging Europe-based Hinduja brothers in the case has been admitted by the apex court.

However, this did not impress the Bench and he was asked to complete technicalities required for hearing a petition.

The petition filed by Agarwal has quoted Law Minister H R Bhardwaj virtually giving a clean chit to Quattrocchi saying that CBI has no evidence against the Italian businessman and "therefore the law officer (Additional Solicitor General B Dutta) was sent to London with a request for defreezing of accounts".