Sahara chief Subrata Roy to raise bail money from conference room in Tihar jail

NEW DELHI: Jailed Sahara chief Subrata Roy will move to a swanky conference room in Tihar prison tomorrow where he will have facilities like video conferencing,Internet and phone so that he can negotiate with potential bidders for sale of his hotels abroad to raise Rs 10,000 crore for bail.

The fully air conditioned room, usually used for confidential meetings and press briefings by jail authorities, has been named "Special Jail" for 66-year-old Roy and two Sahara directors, Ashok Roy Choudhary and Ravi Shankar Dubey, who are also lodged in the same prison.

The facility is being offered to Roy for 10 days following a Supreme Court order last week so that he can hold negotiations for sale of his luxury hotels in New York and London.

Sources in Tihar said all the meetings to be be held by the Sahara chief will be under CCTV surveillance and adequate security will be provided to the team.

The Roy and the two directors are being offered two laptops, two dekstop computers and one mobile phone in the conference room which has WiFi connectivity.

The room has a seating arrangement for 15-20 people and has a 52-inch TV for video-conferencing.

Charges for the services will be paid by the group. Apart from these, Roy's steno, secretarial assistants and one technical assistant will be allowed to help him from 6 AM to 8 PM during all working days.

"Adequate security arrangements have been made. The meetings will be under surveillance of CCTV cameras. All visitors coming to meet Roy will be frisked," said officials.

They said Roy and two Sahara directors will move to the new facility tomorrow morning.

He will be served jail food. But canteen food will also be allowed for him and his visitors. All the rules of jail will apply for his stay in the conference room, they said.

Roy has been lodged in Tihar Jail since March 4 this year. He was arrested over his group's failure to pay back thousands of investors who were sold bonds of over Rs 20,000 crore.

The court had asked Sahara to deposit Rs 10,000 crore initially to secure the release of Roy on bail.

Sahara, the largest private sector employer in the country, had said it does not have the money it has been ordered to pay to secure bail for its chief and requested the court to allow the negotiations to sell their properties to generate the amount.

Initially, Roy was allowed to meet visitors only twice a week and llowed phone calls from the jail's telephone booth. His family members and company's senior officers were among his regular visitors.