JOIN USSC rejects Sahara refund proposal
The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Sahara’s proposal to deposit Rs 2,500 crore with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) in order to secure release of its chief Subrata Roy.
Roy has been jailed for failing to refund Rs 20,000 crore to the investors.A bench of Justices K S Radhakrishnan and J S Khehar also refused to advance the hearing from March 11, resulting into continued incarceration of Roy.
The bench also chided the conglomerate for making the special bench assemble “without some attractive offer.”
“It is an insult to us. You should make a proper proposal. For the last two years, you have not done anything. You should not make us assemble unless you have some better offer,” the bench told senior advocate C A Sundaram, appearing for the company.
Roy, along with two directors of the company, were sent to judicial custody by the apex court and have been lodged in Tihar jail from March 4 after he failed to give concrete proposal for refund of investors’ money.
The court had noted that the Sahara Group “adopted various dilatory tactics” to avoid implementation of the orders of the apex court passed on August 31 and December 5, 2012, and February 25, 2013.
On Friday, the court also trashed Roy’s plea for putting him in police custody instead of Tihar jail for facilitating his company directors and others to meet him. The court said it would order the jail authorities to allow his finance consultants and lawyers to meet him.The bench assembled on a request by the company that it was ready to pay Rs 2,500 crore in cash upfront, contending that it was a “large amount of cash”.
The company submitted that the person (Roy) who can do it (arrange the amount) was not available. The bench, however, did not agree to the submission made by Sundaram.“You must pay. If you want us to arrange a meeting between finance consultants and directors, we can do it,” the bench told him. “We are not accepting this proposal. This is dishonourable proposal,” the bench added.
In its plea, the Sahara Group submitted that it was ready to make a cash payment of Rs 2,500 crore within three days and gave an assurance that it will pay the rest of the amount of Rs 14,900 crore in five installments by the end of July, 2015.