The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted Sahara chief Subrata Roy and two directors of the company interim bail on condition that they deposit Rs.10,000 crore — Rs. 5,000 crore in court and Rs. 5,000 crore by way of bank guarantee — in favour of the Securities and Exchange Board of India.
The same Bench of Justices K.S. Radhakrishnan and J.S. Khehar had on March 4 sent Mr. Roy, Ravi Shankar Dubey and Ashok Roy Choudhary to judicial custody for their failure to repay Rs 20,000 crore to depositors. A woman director, Vandana Bhargava, was let off.
Now the Bench said though Sahara's fresh repayment proposal, filed on Tuesday, “is not in compliance with our order dated August 31, 2012 or the order passed by a three-judge Bench on December 5, 2012 and on February 25, 2013, we are inclined to grant them interim bail…” Mr. Roy and the directors could be “released forthwith and the amount [Rs. 10,000 crore] deposited be released to the SEBI. We make it clear that this order is passed in order to facilitate the contemnors to further raise the balance amount so as to comply with the court's orders.”
Soon after, senior counsel Ram Jethmalani and Rajeev Dhavan pleaded that at present only Rs. 2,500 crore could be raised and the balance amount could be mobilised only after the release of Mr. Roy.
