Court frames charges against Karti, others in Chinese Visa case

New Delhi: A Delhi court on Tuesday framed charges against Congress MP Karti Chidambaram with offences of criminal conspiracy and bribing a public servant for his alleged involvement in a Chinese visa case being investigated by CBI. Besides Karti, six others were charged by the court while one person was discharged.

The special CBI judge held that the court "need not even determine whether the evidence" was sufficient to support a conviction.

The order added, "Those considerations will require attention once the evidence is recorded. At this stage, the court has to merely consider the broad probabilities, the total effect of the evidence and documents produced, any basic infirmities in the case, and so forth. However, this does not entitle the court to make a roving inquiry into the pros and cons."


The agency in its FIR has alleged that Karti received an "illegal gratification of ₹50 lakh to illegally facilitate visas for 263 Chinese nationals" to complete a power project in Punjab. S Bhaskararaman, a co-accused along with Karti Chidambaram in the INX media case, is also an accused in the case.

CBI has alleged that Karti "misused his influence", as the son of the then home minister P Chidambaram, in the home ministry in 2011 and "conspired" with the co-accused to devise a "backdoor way to defeat the purpose of ceiling" on work permits imposed by the ministry. It might be clarified here that P Chidambaram is not an accused in the case.

The court in its order noted that it "is evident, and the law does not require a conspirator to interact with every other conspirator, nor was the recovery or tracing of the bribe money up to Bhaskararaman necessary".

The court found little force in the contentions levelled by the defence that Karti did not read emails. "...Or that there is no substantiated proof of the alleged meeting in Chennai or the telephonic call... The strong suspicion is supported by the approver's statements and the case against him is not based solely on email confirmation," the court held. The court discharged a co-accused, Chetan Shrivastava, on account of insufficient evidence.