New Delhi: Former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran's appeal against his trial in the illegal telephone exchange case lasted only two minutes in the Supreme Court on Monday.
With a sharp retort from a bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Maran's lawyer had no chance in convincing the Court for a favourable order.
"Why did the High Court intervene?" questioned the bench as soon as the matter began.
Senior advocate Vikas Singh, who was appearing for a co-accused in this case, looked encouraged by this poser.
Singh replied that he too was of the opinion that the Madras High Court should not have interfered with exoneration of the accused in the case.
But Justice Gogoi had something else on his mind.
The judge then proceeded: "The High Court had interfered because you were the Telecom Minister at the relevant time. You got a PLI line installed at your house. You had 30 baby telephone lines from this PLI line. In turn, these 30 lines had 300 different telephone lines. And these were used for business of your brother (Kalanithi) who ran a TV channel."
Justice Gogoi added: "Go and face the trial".
However, Singh then disclosed that he was not appearing for Maran but for some other co-accused.
"Why did you jump the queue? We are on the first matter. This is about Mr Dayanidhi Maran," replied Justice Gogoi.
Senior lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi subsequently moved forward and said he was appearing for Maran.
"Mr Singhvi. We won't entertain it here. You go and face the trial. These are matters of trial, not of discharge," the judge told Singhvi.
Singhvi sought to persuade the bench to hear his arguments but Justice Gogoi was categorical.
"As far as Mr Maran is concerned, it is dismissed and that's final," said the judge.
Last week, the Madras High Court had set aside a lower court order discharging all the accused, including the Maran brothers, in the Illegal Telephone Exchange case.
Allowing the appeal filed by the CBI, Justice G Jaichandran directed a special CBI court to frame charges and conclude the trial within 12 months from the date of receipt of copy of the order.
The CBI has alleged that an illegal private telephone exchange was set up at the residence of Dayanidhi Maran in Chennai during 2004-06 when he was the telecom minister and it was used for the business transactions involving the Sun Network owned by Kalanithi.
It alleged that Maran had caused a loss of Rs 1.78 crore to the exchequer.
Other accused in the case included former BSNL general manager K Brahmanathan, former deputy general manager M P Velusamy, Maran's private secretary Gauthaman and some Sun TV officials.
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