Petitioner who gunned for Maran's head calls him "innocent"

New Delhi, Apr 12: In what can be seen as a piece of good news for scam-tainted former communication minister Dayanidhi Maran, who was levelled corruption allegations by a complainant in the Aircel-Maxis deal, has now called him “innocent”. The complainant, NGO Telecom Watchdog’s secretary Anil Kumar, in a letter to the CBI that is probing the allegations, requested the CBI director to stop the investigations against Maran.

The CBI has informed the Supreme Court of this latest development that sought to wash off Maran from the 2G scam taint. The complainant has gone one step further and added that that Chennai-based Aircel founder C Sivasankaran had 'cooked up' the story that alleged that Maran had exerted pressure on Sivasankaran to sell his stake in Aircel to the benefit of Malaysia-based company Maxis in return for kickbacks. The matter was revealed in court by, CBI counsel KK Venugopal.

The matter has come as a shocker to the Justice bench comprising GS Singhvi and KS Radhakrishanan and ordered Kumar to submit a sworn affidavit within a week’s time to explain the 'reasons and circumstances' that prompted him to write directly to the CBI director even when his petition was pending in court.

Kumar was also asked to explain the reasons for writing an article in a magazine that cited a ‘clean chit’ to Maran ahead of stating the facts to the CBI director.

The CBI is expected to question Maran by the end of April; while CBI counsel KK Venugopal stated that investigations on the Aircel-Maxis deal within the country has been completed and the focus now was on continuing the investigations in foreign countries especially Singapore and Malaysia. Letters rogatory has already been dispatched to these places as some of the transactions is alleged to have taken place there.

On the complete U-turn taken by one of the 3 complainants, Venugopal said, “I just wanted to bring to the notice of the court that this was an attempt to 'subvert' the investigation. Earlier he (Kumar) was painting Maran as 'crook' and Sivasankaran as a 'victim' and now it is vise-versa. He is a person, who for unknown reasons has taken a complete about-turn.”

OneIndia News