The Madras High Court on Friday granted conditional permission to Karti P. Chidambaram, son of former Union Minister P. Chidambaram, to travel to UK and France this month with respect to his business dealings connected with Totus Tennis, a London-based firm of which he was one of the directors, irrespective of a Look Out Circular (LOC) pending against him in connection with the INX Media case.
Passing interim orders on his plea challenging the LOC, Chief Justice Indira Banerjee and Justice Abdul Quddhose said CBI probing the INX Media case had not been able to show how the petitioner’s absence from the country for a few dayswould scuttle their investigation.
‘Issue of LOC premature’
eHowever, in so far as his plea for visiting the European countries once again next month was concerned, the judges said that no orders need to be passed on that plea since the final hearing on the main plea challenging the LOC had been scheduled for hearing on March 12.
They also observed that the LOC, prima facie, appeared to have been issued prematurely on June 16, 2017 just a day after summoning the petitioner for inquiry on June 29.
Authoring the order, the Chief Justice said the investigating agency had also not levelled allegations of the petitioner having committed any economic offence. The case had been booked primarily against INX Media represented by its former directors Indrani Mukherjea and Pratim Mukherjea alias Peter Mukherjea on May 15, 2017. Chess Management Services represented by its Director Mr. Karti Chidambaram had been listed only as the third accused.
