The court, which was scheduled to pass its order today on the bail pleas of Marans and others in two seperate cases filed by the CBI and Enforrecement Directorate (ED), deferred the matter for later hearings as it decided to deal with the issue of its jurisdiction first.
Marans have challenged the jurisdiction of the special 2G court in both the cases lodged by the ED and the CBI.
“Arguments on applications filed by accused challenging jurisdiction of this court heard and concluded. Put up the matter for orders on all applications challenging jurisdiction of this court on September 6,” Special Judge O P Saini said.
The court reserved its order in both the cases filed by ED and CBI.
During the hearing today, the Marans submitted before the court that the Aircel-Maxis dispute was a private matter and not part of the alleged 2G spectrum scam.
“Therefore, the court designated to deal exclusively with the 2G spectrum allocation scam could not hear the matter,” the counsel appearing for Marans said, adding that no loss was caused to the public exchequer by the deal.
Dayanidhi Maran, Kalanithi Maran and four others had moved their bail pleas in the money laundering case before the court which has been kept pending.
Besides Maran brothers, Kalanithi’s wife Kavery Kalanithi and K Shanmugam, Managing Director of South Asia FM Ltd (SAFL) have also moved their bail applications in the ED case.
The court had on February 27 summoned all the four accused persons and two firms SAFL and Sun Direct TV Pvt Ltd (SDTPL) as accused in the money laundering case.
The summons were issued by the court while taking cognisance of ED’s charge sheet against the six accused under provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
During the arguments earlier, ED’s special prosecutor N K Matta had claimed that there were money transactions which allegedly showed that SDTPL and SAFL had received Rs 742.58 crore as “proceeds of crime” from Mauritius-based firms in the Aircel-Maxis deal.
PTI