CBI to challenge order on Aircel-Maxis in Delhi High Court

NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation has decided to approach the Delhi High Court to challenge a trial court’s order acquitting the accused in the Aircel-Maxis case, sources in the probe agency said. A special CBI court had in February discharged former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran, his industrialist brother Kalanithi Maran, and several others over alleged irregularities in the Aircel-Maxis deal.

The Enforcement Directorate, the finance ministry wing that probes money laundering, has already filed a petition in the Delhi High Court against the discharge of the Maran brothers.

In its petition, the CBI will contend that the lower court had erred in law while discharging the accused, CBI sources told ET.



They said the agency would argue that the lower court failed to appreciate that it was not the right stage to examine the evidence in detail. The evidence can only be gone into detail and dissected at the trial stage, they said. It would also highlight that the statements recorded in the case could not have been discarded by the special court.

In CBI’s opinion, sufficient evidence was on record to make a strong case against the Maran brothers as well as the others allegedly involved in the case.

The agency’s petition will argue that at this stage, the court was only saddled with the mandate to examine if on the basis of evidence produced an overall case was made out against the accused, according to the sources.

The allegation was that the former minister and his brother in 2006 forced businessman C Sivasankaran to sell his stake in Indian telecom company Aircel to Malaysian businessman T Ananda Krishnan’s Maxis, as part of quid pro quo in the form of bribes.

While discharging the accused in the case, the CBI court had questioned the evidence relied upon by the agency. “It remains only a matter of perception or suspicion and in absence of legally admissible evidence, perception or suspicion means nothing in law,” the court had said.

The discharge had excluded Ananda Krishnan and former Maxis director Augustus Ralph Marshall who were directed by the Supreme Court to appear in the trial court to face criminal charges in the same case.