CHENNAI: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has moved the Madras High Court with an appeal challenging the orders of the Special Court for CBI cases, which on March 14 last, discharged all the accused including a former Union telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran and his brother Kalanidhi Maran from the alleged multi-crore telephone exchange scam case.
Justice G Jayachandran, before whom the appeal came up for hearing on Tuesday, issued notices to the authorities concerned, returnable by June 20.
On March 14, Natarajan, a special judge for CBI cases, had said he was discharging all the seven accused from the case as no prima facie evidence was made available by CBI to prove the charges against them.
The CBI case was that Dayanidhi Maran, during the check period of June 2004 to December 2006, when he was Union minister for communication and information technology, had allegedly misused his office and installed a private telephone exchange at his residences in Chennai and utilised the facility for business transactions involving Sun Network.
Thus, he had caused a loss of Rs 1.78 crore to the exchequer. More than 700 telecom lines had been installed at their residences in Boat Club and Gopalapuram, he agency alleged.
mong the accused were a former BSNL general manager K Brahmanathan, a former deputy general manager M P Velusamy and Dayanidhi Maran’s private secretary Gauthaman.