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Supreme Court relief to Nalini Chidambaram, Karti Chidambaram

The court also declined to interfere with an order passed by the Delhi high court granting bail to Karti Chidambaram in the INX media case.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday restrained the Enforcement Directorate from taking any coercive action against Nalini Chidambaram, wife of former Union minister P. Chidambaram, in a case related to Saradha chit fund scam. The court also declined to interfere with an order passed by the Delhi high court granting bail to Karti Chidambaram in the INX media case.

A bench of justices A. K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan issued notice to the ED on Ms Nalini’s appeal challenging the dismissal of her petition by the Madras High Court against ED summons in the case. The Madras HC on July 10 dismissed an appeal by her against a single-judge bench’s order rejecting her plea challenging the ED summons. The ED had issued the first summons on September 7, 2016, asking Nalini Chidambaram to appear before it at its Kolkata office.

It subsequently issued fresh summons after the single judge’s order. She was allegedly paid a legal fee of Rs 1 crore by the Saradha group for her appearances in court and the Company Law Board over a television channel purchase deal.

In the appeal, she contended that if the trend of summoning and calling advocates who have been engaged by their clients for rendering professional services was not nipped in the bud, it might lead to "disastrous consequences".

Insofar as Karti Chidambaram was concerned the bench rejected the plea of Tushar Mehta for CBI to cancel the bail and said, "When it comes to the question of liberty, the courts do not go into technicality." However, the court said it would leave the question of law open — whether Karti Chidambaram can approach the high court when his application for bail was already pending before the trial court.

The court made the observation after ASG said this question has to be kept open "as invoking powers of concurrent jurisdiction of high court may be a case of 'forum shopping''.

( Source : Deccan Chronicle. )
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