Supreme Court imposes curbs on Karti Chidambaram's foreign travel

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday asked Karti Chidambaram not to go abroad till September 11 and permitted the CBI to furnish details of his interrogation in the case relating to alleged irregular FIPB nod for investment of Rs 305 crore in INX Media in 2007 when his father P Chidambaram was Union finance minister.

A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud heard Karti’s counsel Gopal Subramanium, who claimed that the CBI was on a vindictive path to victimise Karti because his father was a former finance minister and leader of a political party in opposition to the NDA government.

Additional solicitor general Tushar Mehta countered by saying there were “good and cogent reasons for issuance of a lookout notice against Karti” for his alleged role in the FIPB clearance. Co-accused in the case Ravi Vishwanathan, through counsel Raju Ramachandran, sought the court’s permission to travel abroad on September 6 to get his son admitted to a university.


But the court refused and posted the matter for hearing on September 11 and asked the CBI to file reply to Karti’s response in the agency’s appeal against the Madras HC decision to stay the lookout notice. The SC had last month stayed the HC decision, forcing Karti to postpone his plans to travel abroad.

The bench asked Mehta to furnish the interrogation report as well as other documents, which Mehta said would show Karti’s bank accounts and properties abroad, in a sealed cover for the judges' perusal.

Subramanium said right to travel abroad was termed as a fundamental right by the SC in the Maneka Gandhi case in 1978 and the approach and vindictive attitude of the CBI in restraining his client from travelling abroad without any evidence proved that Karti was being used as a pawn in the exercise aimed against P Chidambaram.

Mehta reiterated the charge that Karti had opened accounts abroad and that he possessed properties in foreign countries.

“There are good and cogent reasons for issuance of the lookout notice against him. I will place everything in sealed cover for the perusal of judges,” he said.