Sahara Chief issued contempt-of-court notice by SC

New Delhi, May 6: The next one to get a rap on the knuckle from the Supreme Court seems to be Sahara India Managing Director and Chief Subrato Roy, who has been issued a contempt of court notice. This is in reference to a petition alleging their interference in the Enforcement Directorate"s (ED) probe into the 2G spectrum scam. Two others were also named in the petition, namely Upendra Rai and Subodh Jain, both journalists from Sahara Samay.

The bench comprising of Justices G.H. Singhvi and Asok Kumar Ganguly said the petition was filed after Sahara Samay threatened to publish a series of stories about Rajeshwar Singh, assistant director ED. This is when the court inferred that it prima facie found that an effort was made to hamper investigations by Rajeshwar Singh.

The court commented, “The nexus is more than apparent between the issuance of summons and threat to run series of stories." The apex court also barred Sahara Samay and other channels from publishing the stories on the basis of the 25 questions it had sent to him.

The ED is believed to have called Subrato Roy to its offices for questioning but did not turn up in spite of repeated notices. They also claimed that Roy had gone ahead and published an article about Rajeshwar Singh in its newspaper.

ED had alleged that the Sahara Group had transferred Rs.150 crore to Swan Telecom in relation to the 2G scam, and was involved in the scam that allotted spectrum at throwaway prices to certain telecom companies.

OneIndia News