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Supreme Court dashes Kanimozhi’s hopes

NEW DELHI - DMK MP Kanimozhi and Kalaignar TV managing director Sharad Kumar will continue to remain behind bars as the Supreme Court on Monday rejected their bail pleas in the 2G spectrum scam. However, Kanimozhi can move for bail after the trial court hearing the case frames the charges.

An apex court bench of Justice G.S. Singhvi and Justice B.S. Chauhan said that “in our view, the reasons assigned by the learned special (trial court) judge and the learned single judge of the (Delhi) High Court for refusing to entertain the petitioners’ prayer for bail do not suffer from any legal infirmity”.

The court said that Kanimozhi can invoke Section 437 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), which provides for a consideration in grant of bail to a woman accused under the age of 60.

The judges said that the “fresh applications” for bail by Kanimozhi and Sharad Kumar “shall be decided by the special court without being influenced by the rejection of the earlier applications (for bail)”.

The trial court of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Special Judge O.P. Saini is in recess till July 4, after which it will resume hearing on the chargesheet filed by the CBI in the 2G case.

Kanimozhi and Sharad Kumar each have a 20 percent stake in Kalaignar TV, which allegedly received Rs.200 crore through a “circuitous” route from Shahid Usman Balwa, the promotor of Swan Telecom, which is one of the companies that received 2G spectrum when the DMK’s A. Raja was the telecom minister in 2008.

Raja, who quit after the government auditor Comptroller and Auditor General of India said his decision to allocate the licences on a first-come-first-served basis rather than through an auction caused a notional loss of Rs1.76 lakh crore, as also Balwa are among the 14 people jailed in the case. Kanimozhi, the 43-year-old daughter of DMK chief M. Karunanidhi and the party’s Rajya Sabha member, and Sharat Kumar approached the apex court after the Delhi High Court dismissed their bail applications on June 8.

The two, named as co-conspirator in the supplementary chargesheet for allegedly taking a bribe of Rs200 crore, were arrested on May 20 after the trial court dismissed their bail pleas in the case.

Karunanidhi will visit Delhi on Tuesday to meet for a second time his daughter Kanimozhi in the Tihar Central Jail here. “Karunanidhi is expected to meet Kanimozhi on Tuesday.

“He is really upset that her bail plea was rejected in the Supreme Court,” a party leader said here on Monday.