Illegal telephone exchange case: It took just 2 mins for SC to tell Maran to face trial

New Delhi, July 30: It took 2 minutes for the Supreme Court to decide that former union minister, Dayanidhi Maran must face trial in the illegal telephone exchange case. Go face trial, the court said while disposing off the matter.

When the question of why the Madras High Court had interfered in the matter came up, the court said, " the court interfered because you were the telecom minister at the relevant time. You got a PLI line installed in your house. You had 30 baby telephone lines from this PLI line. In turn these 30 lines had 300 different telephone lines. And these were used for business of your brother (Kalanithi Maran) who ran a TV channel."

When the advocates persuaded the court to re-think on the order, the judge said, ' as long as Maran is concerned it is dismissed and that is final.'

The court had said that Maran must face trial in the illegal telephone exchange case. The Bench upheld an order of the Madras High Court.

The Madras HC had said Dayanidhi Maran and his elder brother Kalanidhi Maran must face trial in the case. The court had remitted the case back to the special court for CBI cases and directed that the trial and complete framing of charges be done in 12 weeks. As a result of this, the Maran brothers will face trial before the special CBI court.

On March 14th, a special judge had said he was discharging all seven accused from the case since there was no prima facie evidence. The CBI however said that between June 2004 and December 2006, Maran, while he was the union minister had misused his office and installed a private telephone exchange at his home in Chennai and used it for business transactions. A loss of Rs 1.78 crore was caused to the exchequer because of this, the CBI said.