Dayanidhi Maran's myriad accusations following CBI's arrest of his aide stir no one to talk

CHENNAI: In a no-holds-barred media briefing, former union minister Dayanidhi Maran made many accusations, following CBI's arrest of his aide in an alleged misuse of power to get about 300 illegal high-speed BSNL telephone connections. But the accusations were either scoffed at or met with silence.

Soon after meeting DMK chief M Karunanidhi on Thursday, Maran addressed the media and said the CBI was becoming a "fixing" bureau. He said since the CBI could not produce any evidence to substantiate its claims in the case against him, it was arresting people close to him and forcing them to make false statements. The CBI in turn not only ignored Maran's comments but later in the day went ahead and produced Maran's former private secretary and two others in court.

Maran then accused an RSS ideologue, indirectly pointing at columnist S Gurumurthy . Maran said the "RSS intellectual" was trying to desperately prove right his expose in a newspaper referring to Gurumurthy's series of stories on the telephone exchange scam. Gurumurthy rubbished Maran's claims. He told ET: "The case has been on from 2007, when the UPA was in power. I am being unduly credited with the expose of this scam while I merely mentioned what the CBI has documented. Maran is now abusing because he has no other defence."