Madras High Court directs Dayanidhi Maran to surrender before CBI in 3 days

Following a request from Maran’s counsel, the judge granted three days, ie on or before August 13, 4.30 pm, for Maran to surrender himself before the authority concerned.

Dayanidhi Maran had been moving various courts, including the designated CBI court in Chennai, New Delhi and the Madras high court to prevent the special task force, which was investigating the case, from arresting him.

Dismissing the anticipatory bail petition filed by Dayanidhi Maran, Justice S. Vaidyanathan said: “Taking note of the huge magnitude of the case, I am of the considered view that it is not appropriate to entertain the application of the petitioner for grant of anticipatory bail.”

“I find prima facie the exact role of the petitioner being the then Union minister for communications and information technology in misusing his office for his wrongful gain by obtaining telephone connections illegally in the name of BSNL officials under ‘service category’. I do not find any frivolity in the allegations,” the judge said.

He added that “it is learnt from media that the accusations were also made against petitioner in case — Aircel-Maxis deal and Tata-Rupert Murdoch DTH project”.

The illegal telephone connections were used for the benefit of Sun TV and Maran and other accused were running private mini-exchanges from their houses illegally.

Dayanidhi Maran was that he was telecom minister during 2004-2007. The allegations against him were that he allegedly committed the offence by abusing his official position and in collusion with the officials of BSNL, Chennai, the then CGMs K.Brahmadathan and M.P.Velusamy, and other unknown officials.

Maran installed more than 300 telephone connections with ISDN-PRA and ISDN-BRA, Lease Circuit facilities and 19 post paid mobile connections in his residence in the name of Brahmadathan and Velusamy, to show these connections illegally under ‘service category’.

No payment was made for the installation and rentals. Users bills were not generated. A huge sum was allegedly misappropriated thereby causing a wrongful loss to the government to the tune of Rs.1.20 crore.

In December 2006, Maran shifted his residence from Gopalapuram to Boat Club Road. Again, another 353 high end connections were obtained by him illegally under ‘service category’ without the previous connections being disconnected.

Both the houses of Maran were provided with optical fibre cable connectivity (OFC) illegally. The NIC, New Delhi, purchased and installed several video conferencing equipment at Chennai and Delhi residences illegally.

The petitioner had also obtained 13 connections at his New Delhi residence from MTNL, New Delhi and 8+8 MBPs leased line circuit was also obtained illegally under service category.

He never took the approval of DOT for the ISDN and leased line circuits, which cannot be provided to anybody, including the minister under service category.

The exchanges were configured/interfaced with the main exchange installed at the then Sun TV head office, Anna Arivalayam, Chennai with the facilities provided by BSNL/MTNL.