The Madras High Court on Wednesday stayed all further proceedings in a second Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) case pending since 1996 against Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam leader and R.K. Nagar MLA T.T.V. Dhinakaran before an economic offences court at Egmore here.
Justice RMT. Teekaa Raman granted the interim stay on a revision petition preferred by the accused who had challenged an order passed by the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (Economic Offences-II) on April 11 refusing to try the two FERA cases together at the request of the petitioner.
Justice M.V. Muralidaran of the High Court had on March 7 stayed the proceedings in the first FERA case too before reserving his judgment on another criminal revision petition filed by the accused challenging the refusal of the Magistrate to provide him copies of certain official documents related to the case.
During the course of arguments before Justice Raman, senior counsel B. Kumar, representing the revision petitioner, said the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) had initially filed a private complaint before the Magistrate in 1996 with respect to investments made in a company incorporated in British Virgin Islands in 1994.
According to the prosecution, the revision petitioner was the Director of the company named Dipper Investments which had maintained an account with Barclays Bank in the UK. In 1994, 21 cheques totalling $1,04,93,313 were deposited into the account of the said company in the bank, and hence, the complaint on charges of unauthorised transfer.
‘Try cases together’
After obtaining permission from the lower court to conduct further investigation in the case, the ED, instead of filing a supplementary chargesheet, ended up preferring a fresh complaint accusing the petitioner of having acquired foreign exchange of £36,36,000 and £1 lakh during 1994-95 from unauthorised dealers without the Reserve Bank of India’s permission.
Since both the cases were connected, they should be tried together, the senior counsel contended. Taking strong objection to such a plea, Additional Solicitor-General G. Rajagopalan said the 22-year-old FERA cases should be referred to the Guinness Book of World Records for the number of years taken to conclude the trial.
He accused the petitioner of having successfully attempted to stall the trial proceedings in the two cases for more than two decades by filing multiple revision petitions before the High Court and obtaining interim stay orders. He said the present revision petition was also a ploy to drag on the trial for a few more years.
