CBI begins arguments in Madras high court against discharge of Marans
Chennai: The CBI has commenced its arguments before the Madras high court in connection with an appeal filed by it challenging verdict of trial court discharging former Union minister Dayanidhi Maran, his elder brother Kalanidhi Maran and others from a two-decade-old illegal telephone exchange scam in March this year.
When the appeal came up for hearing before Justice G Jayachandran, the counsel for Maran sought to adjourn the matter to till the end of July, as senior counsels who argued the case in the trial court are out of country.
Commencing the arguments, CBI’s counsel Srinivasan accused Dayanidhi Maran of abusing his official position to obtain huge number of phone connections flouting the rules and allowing it to be commercially used by Sun TV owned by his brother Kalanidhi Maran.
The rules permit only three landline connections and two mobile connections to the minister and the number of calls is also limited. But bills were never raised by the BSNL for all the connections, which was illegal.
He said practically a single individual cannot use hundreds of phone connections. Therefore, it must have obviously been used for the benefit of Sun TV. He said there is prima facie case made out against the accused, the trial court was wrong in discharging them from the case. According to the prosecution, Dayanidhi Maran, during the check period of June 2004 to December 2006, when he was Union minister for communication and information technology, misused his office and installed a private telephone exchange at his residences in Chennai and used it for business activities of Sun TV Network.
Hence, he caused a loss of Rs 1.78 crore to the exchequer. More than 700 telecom lines had been installed at their residences initially in Gopalapuram and later in the Boat Club area.
On March 14 this year, special judge for CBI cases S. Natarajan discharged all seven accused Dayandhi Maran, Kalanidhi Maran, former BSNL general manager K Brahmanathan, former deputy general manager M P Velusamy, Dayanidhi Maran’s private secretary Gauthaman, Kannan and Ravi - Sun TV staff from the case as there was no prima facie in the charges. Natarajan said this court comes to conclusion that prosecution has not placed sufficient material to establish that the allegation that Dayanidhi Maran got more phone connections with mala fide intention to use them for Sun TV.
