BackSC may accommodate Subrata Roy plea for office in jail
Subrata Roy asks for secretarial assistance, computers and WiFi internet access while inside the jail
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New Delhi: Sahara Group chief Subrata Roy on Friday asked the Supreme Court to allow him access to an outhouse in the Tihar jail premises to facilitate business transactions.
Roy, being represented by senior lawyer K.T.S. Tulsi at the hearing, asked for secretarial assistance, computers and WiFi internet access while inside the jail. “I will do everything to earn my freedom. My second objective is to comply with the court order," Tulsi told the court on behalf of Roy.
On 22 July, the Supreme Court said it would allow Roy to negotiate the sale with interested buyers between 10 am and 4 pm every day under police supervision if Sahara approached it with a “concrete proposal" for the sale of its properties.
Sahara has to raise Rs10,000 crore for the bail of Roy and two directors of Sahara India Real Estate Corp. Ltd and Sahara Housing Investment Corp. Ltd.
On Friday, a bench consisting of justices T.S. Thakur, Anil R. Dave and A.K. Sikri, while considering Roy’s plea, said the court’s focus was only on helping the group to negotiate with potential buyers of its assets and not on the comfort of the jailed men.
“This is not with a view to make them comfortable beyond what they deserve," the court said.
The court has asked solicitor general Ranjit Kumar to submit a proposal for shifting Roy and the two directors to an alternative location within the jail complex on 30 July.
The outhouse is not considered to be ‘jail’, but the lieutenant governor of Delhi can notify it as one. There is also a building where court proceedings take place in the jail complex, the solicitor general informed the court, adding that a room there could be used to set up as an office.
Sahara filed an application before the apex court for access to the outhouse to ensure confidentiality in the negotiations for sale/transfer of eight domestic properties and three international properties.
Roy and the two directors were sent to judicial custody on 4 March after a non-bailable warrant was issued against them for failing to appear before the court in contempt of court proceedings initiated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi).
That case came about from Sahara’s failure to follow an earlier ruling by the court to refund at least Rs20,000 crore of money to the capital market regulator which would then pass it on to people from whom it had been raised by two Sahara Group companies illegally.
The case will be taken up next on 30 July.
Sahara has filed a defamation case in a Patna court against Mint’s editor and some reporters over the newspaper’s coverage of the company’s dispute with Sebi. Mint is contesting the case.
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