Supreme Court livid at Subrata Roy's mindgames

In A huge blow for Sahara Group chairman Subrata Roy, the Supreme Court upheld his detention for non- refund of over Rs 20,000 crore to investors on Tuesday despite repeated directions and took serious offence of his " calculated offensives and mindgames" using his lawyers.

A Bench of justices K. S. Radhakrishnan and J. S. Khehar passed severe strictures against Roy, his company and his battery of senior lawyers- including Ram Jethmalani and Rajiv Dhavan- for their conduct in the court and the manner in which they went about the case.

While the Bench accused the lawyers of making insinuations and at times passing insulting remarks after the Judges opted to hear the petition challenging his " illegal detention" themselves rather than recusing, Roy was slammed for " brazen disobedience of repeated order to refund the investors striking the very root of law" and instead continuing to file " frivolous" petitions.

The Bench said that the Group adopted a demeanour of defiance constituting a rebellious behaviour not amenable to the rule of law, and justified its decision to send Roy along with two promoters of the companies to jail. The Bench said that it started adopting sequentially harsher means to persuade compliance of its order on refunding money leading to his detention after all the efforts to cajole the two companies and the petitioner were methodically circumvented.

"Efforts made to cajole the two companies and the petitioner were always stonewalled and brushed off. All intermediary means to secure compliance of this Courts orders dated 31.8.2012 and 5.12.2012, were evaded and skirted," the court said.

Reserving the harshest words for Roy's companies Sahara India Real Estate Corporation Ltd and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation Ltd, the court said, " The factual assertions made on behalf of the two companies seemed to be totally unrealistic and could well be fictitious, concocted and made up", and also remarked that "the affairs of the two companies seemed to be doubtful, dubious and questionable".

SAHARA DISAPPOINTED
After the Supreme Court upheld its order jailing Sahara chairman Subrata Roy, the Group's counsel Keshav Mohan expressed disappointment. " We are disappointed with the judgment delivered by the honourable Supreme Court," he said. " We are still in the process of reading and understanding the judgment.

The voluminous evidence that we have already submitted to substantiate our stance may have possibly been misunderstood." Reiterating that the Group has already refunded money to 93 per cent of its investors, he said, " Most of the payments made were in cash as per RBI norms and in accordance with Sebi and Sat orders.

Courtesy: Mail Today