The court, admitting the criminal revision petition, issued notice to the Maran brothers and other accused.
The CBI on Tuesday moved the Madras High Court, challenging the discharge of former Union Minister Dayanidhi Maran and his elder brother and Sun TV group Head Kalanithi Maran and others in the illegal BSNL telephone exchange case.
The court, admitting the criminal revision petition, issued notice to the Maran brothers and other accused.
A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court, on March 14 discharged the Maran brothers and others in what is called the illegal telephone exchange case.
The Maran brothers and other accused were discharged by the CBI court on the grounds that there was “no prima facie material” against them.
The others who were discharged were BSNL's former Chief General Manager K.Brahmanathan and former Deputy General Manager M Velusamy, the former minister's Personal Secretary V. Gowthaman, and Sun TV network employees S Kannan and KS Ravi.
The CBI had alleged a loss of Rs 1.78 crore to the government due to the installation of an alleged illegal telephone exchange at Dayanidhi Maran's house which was used for Sun TV operations.
The CBI alleged that Dayanidhi Maran misused his office when he was the Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology and installed a private telephone exchange at his residence in Chennai between 2004 to 2006. CBI accused Dayanidhi of installing 764 telephone lines at his residence to facilitate illegal uplink of Sun TV data.
Reacting to the judgement, RSS ideologue S Gurumurthy, who has been vocal against the Maran brothers had said their discharge in the illegal telephone case is a shame on CBI and fraud criminal jurisprudence and that the CBI should appeal against the discharge forthwith.
“The case is not even tried. It is discharge which means even the charge sheet does not disclose offence. Even the NIE article was a better charge sheet than the one CBI filed. The CBI undertstated the loss, limited it to cable laying expenses, leaving 800 lines user charges,” he said on Twitter.
(With IANS inputs)
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