New Delhi:
The Supreme Court has asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to respond to whether an investigation will be conducted into former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran for allegedly setting up a telephone exchange at his house in Chennai.
The Public Interest Petition or PIL filed by S Gurumurthy alleges that the state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) obliged Mr Maran by setting up dozens of phone lines at his home, which were then linked to the offices of Sun TV, owned by his brother Kalanidhi. The phone lines were reportedly used illicitly by the channel to transfer huge amounts of data without paying for the service.
Mr Maran is already being investigated by the CBI for allegedly misusing his office as telecom minister to help an industrialist from Malaysia buy Indian company Aircel. The former owner of Aircel, C Sivasankaran, has alleged that in 2006, Mr Maran refused to sanction licenses and other permissions necessary for his firm till he agreed to sell it to T Ananda Krishnan, who owns the Maxis group in Malaysia. In exchange, the CBI alleges, the entrepreneur invested hundreds of crores in Sun.
Mr Maran has denied the allegations. He belongs to the DMK, which has been bruised heavily by allegations of another telecom scam. DMK leader A Raja, who succeeded Mr Maran as telecom minister, spent a year in jail for allegedly engineering one of India's largest-ever scams. Mr Raja allegedly gave sweetheart deals for telecom licenses and second-generation airwaves to companies that he favoured.
The CBI says one of those firms repaid him by routing a large kickback to a TV channel in Chennai co-owned by Kanimozhi, whose father M Karunanidhi is the head of the DMK. She spent six months in jail and is being tried for corruption and criminal conspiracy along with Mr Raja and executives of some of India's biggest telecom firms at a court in Delhi.