By Aditya Kalra and Arpan Chaturvedi

NEW DELHI, Sept 26 (Reuters) - A former top Amazon ( AMZN )

seller in India has asked a judge to quash an antitrust

investigation that found the U.S. e-commerce company and some of

its sellers breached local competition laws, court records

showed on Thursday.

Antitrust investigations conducted by the Competition

Commission of India (CCI) have found Amazon ( AMZN ) and Walmart's ( WMT )

Flipkart, some of their sellers and smartphone brands, violated

local competition laws by giving preference to select online

sellers and prioritizing certain listings, Reuters has reported.

The findings follow a Reuters investigation in 2021 which

was based on Amazon's ( AMZN ) internal documents and showed the company

gave preferential treatment for years to a small group of

sellers on its platform, and used them to bypass Indian laws.

Amazon ( AMZN ) denied any wrongdoing.

One of those sellers, Appario, which has since ceased to be

a seller on Amazon ( AMZN ), on Thursday challenged the CCI in the High

Court in Karnataka state, saying the investigation report that

names it must be "set aside", court records showed.

No further information on the grounds for the suit was

immediately available.

The lawsuit marks the first legal challenge to the CCI

investigation that started in 2020, and poses a major challenge

to Amazon ( AMZN ) in India, a key market.

Appario also said in the suit that a CCI order that asked it

to submit its financial statements after the investigation was

completed should be quashed, according to the court's records.

Appario, Amazon ( AMZN ) and the competition regulator did not

respond to requests for comment.

Amazon ( AMZN ) maintained it does not give preferential treatment to

any seller and complies with all laws, but said in October 2022

that Appario will within a year cease to list products on its

website.

The Reuters investigation had found that Appario was

internally referred to as a "special" merchant and received

discounted fees and access to Amazon ( AMZN ) global retail tools used

for things like inventory management.

In 2022, the CCI raided Appario and some other sellers as

part of its investigations.