CHENNAI: Observing that the High Court cannot come to the rescue of the accused in the multi-crore telephone exchange scam case each and every time, the Madras High Court has dismissed the petitions from the Maran brothers and others seeking to quash the criminal proceedings pending before the Special Court for CBI cases, for the third time.
If the petitioners are confident enough that they have a strong case for their defence and none of the charges framed by the lower court can be sustained, they must willingly go ahead facing the trial and get an honourable acquittal. On the contrary, they had ensured that this case does not cross the threshold of framing of charges and come up with the same plea every time by giving it a different form.
According to CBI, Dayanidhi Maran misused his office when he was the Union minister for communication and information technology and installed a private telephone exchange at his residences in Chennai, which he used for the business transactions of Sun Network.
The judge directed the Special Court to proceed further with the trial and complete the proceedings within four months.
In a case where the prosecution has levelled allegations bringing out all ingredients of the charges and had placed materials before the court, prima facie evidencing the truthfulness of the allegations, trial must be held. But the petitioners do not want to face the trial and establish their defence in accordance with law. They had consumed sufficient judicial time of this court and this is the third time, this court is called upon to interfere with the proceedings of the trial court, at the stage of framing charges. This court cannot interfere with the proceedings of the lower court at each and every step and that is not the purport and scope of exercising its jurisdiction under sec. 482 CrPC, Justice N Anand Venkatesh said.
The judge directed the Special Court to proceed further with the trial and complete the proceedings within four months. The trial shall be conducted strictly in line with Sec. 309 of the CrPC and the guidelines given by the Supreme Court. If the petitioners adopt any dilatory tactics, it is open to the trial court to insist upon their presence and remand them to custody as laid down by the Supreme Court, the judge added.
The judge said that he is of the view that this case does not fall within the ‘rarest of rare’ cases requiring interference in exercise of its jurisdiction. Their attempt is to give a skewed meaning for the observations made by the Supreme Court and the High Court in January this year. This court is convinced that the trial court had fulfilled all the requirements before framing the charges in this case. There is absolutely no ground to interfere with the charges framed by the trial court.
A combined reading of Section 215 and 464 of the CrPC makes it very clear that unless irregularity or omission in framing charges had misled or caused prejudice to the accused in his defence and had occasioned a failure of justice, it will not vitiate the trial. Such irregularity is even curable under sec. 465 of the CrPC, the judge pointed out.
The judge was dismissing a batch of criminal original petitions from former Union telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran, Sun TV group head Kalanithi Maran, K S Ravi, S Kannan and Vedagiri Gowthaman, seeking to quash the proceedings pending before the Special Court for CBI cases in the city, on Wednesday. The other three accused were former employees of the BSNL or Sun TV group.
The case of the prosecution is that Dayanidhi Maran, while he was the Minister for Communication and Information Technology during 2004-2007, abused and misused his office in connivance with the other accused and had obtained pecuniary advantage and caused the exchequer a loss of
`1.78 crore by installing a private telephone exchange at his residences in Boat Club and Gopalapuram, which he used for business transactions involving the Sun Network. More than 700 high-end telecom lines, having PRA/BRA/ISDN/leased-line were installed at his residences. They were installed under the service category and bills were not raised for their utilisation.
Besides, illegal installation of landlines with ISDN facilities on the instruction of Dayanidhi, additional SIM cards for the use of mobile phones with fancy numbers were blocked for Sun TV and distributed to private individuals connected with Sun TV Network. The facilities given to Dayanidhi were excessive, without authority and not in consonance with the rules and entitlement of a Minister or a Member of Parliament.
Records were fabricated and used as genuine to cover up the misdeed.
Based on fabricated documents, accounts were falsified to show as if there are no outstanding dues from Dayanidhi, the prosecution said.
Based on this and the materials collected in the course of investigation, a final report was filed against all the five accused for various offences under the IPC and Section 13 (2) r/w 13(1)(c) (d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 and Substantive Offences thereof.
No interference
The judge said that he is convinced that the trial court had fulfilled all the requirements before framing the charges in this case. There is absolutely no ground to interfere with the charges framed by the trial court
