Hindustan
Times: New Delhi: Thursday, November 08, 2012.
The CBI was
on Wednesday asked by the Delhi high court to respond to a plea for cross
examination of the minister for personnel and Training in a case related to
alleged masking of international calls as local ones by erstwhile Reliance
Infocomm for two years from 2000. Justice Rajiv Shakdher issued notice to the
probe agency and sought its reply by April 29, 2013 on an application filed by
PC Srivastava, a lawyer and an RTI applicant in this case, alleging that CBI
has failed to explain the reasons for not naming the Ambani brothers for past
several years and wanted to question the minister or the CBI officer dealing
with the case before the court.
"The
working of CBI is reflective and it appears that the agency is merely doing
formality of investigations and only implicating small offenders and filing
chargesheet in petty offences, on the other hand, malafidely saving the skin of
big offenders...," the petitioner said.
"It is
necessary in the ends of justice as well as to prevent the abuse of process of
the court and direct the Minister Department of Personnel and Training by
fixing a Date for his appearance for cross examination on behalf to arrive at a
definite conclusion," Srivastava said in his plea.
Similarly,
the lawyer also sought an order fixing a date for the cross examination of the
CBI officer who has filed the affidavit in this court in the case.
The court was
hearing a plea filed by Union of India challenging the CIC's May 26, 2011 order
directing the probe agency to disclose by June 20, 2011 to Srivastava its
reasons for not naming Ambani brothers in the case, despite having named
several top officials of Reliance Infocomm.
The CBI had
taken up the probe in 2006, a year after Reliance industry was divided between
the feuding siblings - Mukesh and Anil. Reliance Infocomm went to Anil and was
rechristened Reliance Communications.
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 accused in the case by which they
would be able to argue why they too should 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".
In July 2010,
the CBI had filed a charge sheet before a Chennai court against the Reliance
Infocomm officials Manoj Modi, Akhil Gupta, Shankar Adawal, Pankaj Powar, K R
Raju and Bhagwan Das Khurana in the case.
After the
charge sheet, Srivastava had sought to know from the CBI the reasons for not
making Ambani brothers as accused in the case relating to the alleged
manipulation and tampering of calling lines and thereby passing off
international calls as local ones and thus causing loss to the government and
its PSUs, BSNL and MTNL, worth crores of rupees.
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