Former Telephone Minister to surrender within 3 days
On Monday, the Madras High Court cancelled conditional anticipatory bill granted to Dayanidhi Maran and asked him to surrender within 3 days, before the Central Bureau of India.
Earlier, on June 30, Maran was granted bail by Justice R Subbiah, on the condition that, he would cooperate with the inquiry. However, later CBI stated that, the former Union telecom minister was not cooperating in the investiagation.
Following this, Justice S Vaidhyanathan said that after evaluating the entire material available against Dayanidhi, it was found that, despite, being the Union minister for Communications and Information Technology, he misused his office for unfair gain by obtaining telephone connections illegally in the name of BSNL officials under ‘service category’.
Justice S Vaidhyanathan also added, that he didnot do not find any frivolity in prosecution’s demand in this case. Though the FIR for the case was lodged in 2013, however the CBI had failed then to make any effort to arrest Dayanidhi.
Giving Weight to this fact, the court denied the former Minister’s arguments.
CBI’s Chargesheet also ads to this case and brings to light the fact that during Dayanidhi’s term as Union Telecom Minister, he had laid “300 high-speed lines” to his Boat Club Road residence in Chennai and further the lines were used for faster transmission of signals of channels of Sun TV network that is owned by his brother Kalanithi Maran.
The agency also claimed that Dayanidhi had obtained 364 actual telephone numbers/lines without entitlement, but billing addresses of these connections were offices of chief general managers, BSNL, Chennai Telephones.
