P Chidambaram to remain in CBI custody till August 30
NEW DELHI : The Special CBI court has extended the CBI remand of former Finance Minister P Chidambaram by four more days in relation to the INX Media case. He will now be produced before the court on August 30.
Representing Chidambaram, senior lawyer and Congress leader Kapil Sibal had contended extending his client’s remand on grounds that the probe agencies do not have any new evidence. In response to this, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta responded that the Enforcement Directorate has found new evidence which needs to be interrogated.
Earlier today, the Supreme Court dismissed Chidambaram’s appeal against the Delhi High court order, denying an anticipatory bail in the CBI case. The apex court has asked Chidambaram to move a regular bail before the appropriate court, saying his petition became infructuous since he had been arrested on August 21.
During the hearing, P Chidambaram’s counsel, Kabil Sibal, accused the ED of leaking crucial documents to the media in connection with the INX Media case. “It can’t be that they give or show any document to the court and I am not entitled to look into it. They leak it to media.
They leaked the ED affidavit to the media,” he added. Kapil Sibal said, “Notes, documents, diaries were passed on to Delhi HC judge as evidence. These documents were not shown to P Chidambaram during questioning.” He said he had been hearing for the past three years about the allegations of corruptions but not one document was put before Chidambaram.
Chidambaram, the SC on Monday declined to convert his petition against rejection of anticipatory bail by the Delhi High Court into a petition for regular bail. The apex court also refused to “entertain” Chidambaram’s petition against the CBI. The apex court, however, advised the former finance minister to seek regular bail from the concerned court, which means the special CBI court that sent him to four-day CBI custody on Thursday.
During the hearing, Justice R Banumathi observed that Chidambaram’s plea against anticipatory bail has become infructuous and his lawyers had not yet filed a third petition against the CBI remand. “It has not been listed so far. And we can’t pass order on listing. It is for the CJI to do”, said the SC.
Today’s hearing remained inconclusive and it will continue tomorrow. Representing Mr Chidambaram, his Congress colleague Kapil Sibal, a senior lawyer, said the High Court had simply accepted documents handed by the ED and, clubbing them with the CBI case, denied Mr Chidambaram protection from arrest.
“Paragraphs in the High Court judgement were a verbatim copy of the CBI/ Enforcement Directorate note, comma by comma, full stop by full stop, word by word, sentence by sentence, the chart. Their note become findings of the court. Where is the application of mind by the judge?” said Mr Sibal.
The E D has submitted an affidavit to the Supreme Court that alleges that Mr Chidambaram, along with his “close confidants and co-conspirators (names withheld by the agency) created a web of shell companies in India and abroad for laundering proceeds of crime”.
Some of this money, the Enforcement Directorate alleges, is from the alleged INX Media deal. Mr Chidambaram is accused of facilitating, as the country’s Finance Minister, foreign investment in media company INX Media in 2007 at his son Karti’s instance. It says 17 benami – or proxy – foreign bank accounts and 10 expensive properties were bought in India and abroad from the proceeds.
(With Agency Inputs ).
