Chennai: A five-member CBI team from Delhi on Saturday grilled Sarath Kumar and Hansraj Saxena, former senior executives of Sun TV network, in connection with the alleged misuse of BSNL phone lines by Dayanidhi Maran in his capacity as Union communication minister during UPA-I rule for data transfer for his family-owned TV channels. The sleuths have summoned chief technical officer Kannan of Sun TV for questioning in this connection, informed sources said.
Sarath Kumar, who was arrested by the CBI earlier in the 2G case as he was the MD of Kalaignar TV allegedly involved in the scam, and Saxena were questioned separately by the present CBI team probing the BSNL case. The quizzing took place at the BSNL office in T’Nagar around noon Saturday. Sarath had quit Sun TV in 2004, about six months after Dayanidhi became minister. Saxena had left the Sun group in 2011 when the AIADMK government started police action against him for alleged arm-twisting of movie producers to benefit Sun Pictures, which he had denied stoutly.
When reporters asked him about the CBI questioning, Sarath refused to divulge details. “They called me for clarification of certain things and I have provided that. I am not in a position to talk about this”, he said. When the media asked Saxena about his questioning, he said he was asked about an illegal exchange set up at Maran’s house (with 323 ISDN lines that had high speed data transmission and up-linking facility mainly used at free of cost by Sun group for commercial purpose).
“Investigations are going on. I am not in a position to talk about it. Sarath and I were questioned separately. They told me I will be called again. I was VP Programming and had nothing to do with the uplinking. They should ask one Sri Lankan who was in the technical dept about this. The questioning was only about this illegal exchange case and nothing else,” he said.
