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The Supreme Court will take a decision on the imprisonment of Sahara Group chief Subrata Roy within a few days, the judges indicated today after hearing his lawyers’ plea that he may be shifted to a guest house in Lucknow.
This plea has already been rejected by the former bench, but has now been revived before the new bench.
The new bench consisting of Justices T S Thakur and A K Sikri was firm on the continuation of judicial custody ordered three months ago, but they sympathetically heard Roy’s counsel on shifting him to a place where he can raise the bail amount of Rs 10,000 crore set for his release.
The bench heard the case at a special sitting for three hours and reserved its order on the place of detention and the sale of nine properties in India to meet the demand of the court for his release. The prestigious project Amby Valley was not among them.
Sahara also proposed to sell three properties in the US and UK, but since the valuation of those properties, mostly hotels, was not immediately available, the court asked it to produce the valuation. Sahara lawyer Rajeev Dhawan disclosed that Bank of China has charge on the properties and shares of those foreign assets as the group has taken loans from it. Therefore the court allowed a week’s time to contact the bank and get the correct valuation of the assets assessed by two reputed valuers. The court clarified that the documents will “indicate the true market value of the properties.”
The court also asked Sahara to get the response of the bank regarding the proposed sale. The Securities Exchange Board of India will be allowed to give its response to the affidavit to be filed by Sahara on the response of the bank.
Dhawan reiterated Sahara stand that as long as Roy was in the Tihar jail here and allowed to make only three phone calls of three minutes each, it would be “impossible” to meet the conditions for bail. International transactions take months and no one will talk to someone in jail. In this case, Bank of China and the Sultan of Bruneii are involved. The condition imposed by the court will confine the chairman to years in jail, counsel said.
Much of the three hours of arguments was spent on the properties available for sale and their valuation and encumbrances. Sebi lawyer Pratap Venugopal wanted the terms of the sales to be presented to the court in a transparent manner, the sale should not be to related parties, bank guarantees should be unconditional and irrevocable and payments should be made directly to the banks designated by Sebi.
