The Delhi High Court has fixed January 25, 2012 for the final hearing of CBI's plea against a CIC order directing it to make reasons public for not naming industrialist brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani in a ISD call re-routing case, in which top Reliance Infocomm executives have figured.
Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw also granted more time to RTI applicant PC Srivastava to file his reply on the CBI plea.
Earlier, on July 13, the court had stayed the operation and implementation of the May 27 CIC order for disclosure of informations while issuing notice to Srivastava.
The agency had refused to disclose information to the RTI applicant, saying doing so would affect its prosecution in the case.
"Disclosing such information would provide clues to other persons accused in the said case by which they would be able to argue why they should also not be charged," the CBI had said.
"Section 8(1)(h) of the RTI Act exempts disclosure of information which would impede the process of investigation or apprehension or prosecution of offenders".
Last year, the CBI had filed a charge sheet against Manoj Modi and five others in a case relating to masking of international calls as local by Reliance Infocomm when it was controlled by Mukesh-led RIL.
Srivastava had sought to know from the CBI the reasons for not making Ambani brothers as accused in the case relating to alleged manipulation and tampering of calling lines identification of ISD calls by Reliance Infocomm Ltd and thereby passing off international calls as local ones.
The CBI had taken up the investigation of the company in 2006, a year after Mukesh and his younger brother Anil reached a family settlement to divide the Reliance empire, as part of which the Reliance Infocomm went to Anil. The company has since been rechristened Reliance Communications.
Besides Modi, CBI named Akhil Gupta, Shankar Adawal, Pankaj Powar, KR Raju and Bhagwan Das Khurana of RIL in the charge sheet.
Gupta has since left the Mukesh Ambani group and is now heading Blackstone, a leading US private equity firm.
