New Delhi: The Supreme Court Thursday extended by three months the deadline given to CBI and ED to complete their probe into the alleged irregularities in grant of FIPB approval to the Aircel-Maxis deal, in which former finance minister P Chidambaram and his son Karti Chidambaram have been questioned by the agencies.
The top court had on March 12 given a deadline till September 12 to the CBI, ED and other agencies to complete the probe in the case. A bench of Justices A K Sikri and Ashok Bhushan today said that the investigating agencies are directed to complete the probe in three months.
Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the ED and CBI, said the agencies needed 2-3 months more to complete the probe as they needed to confront some accused through e-mails.
The bench adjourned the matter for further hearing after three months.
On March 12, the apex court had set a deadline of six months for ED to complete the probe into the alleged irregularities in FIPB approval to the Aircel-Maxis deal. The issue had surfaced during the probe into the 2G spectrum allocation related cases. The court had observed that investigation has been going on for a long time and people of the country cannot be kept in the dark on a sensitive matter like this.
Earlier, the Centre had told the court that in the main 2G spectrum case involving former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran, the special court had acquitted all the accused. Similarly in other related cases, the accused were either acquitted or discharged.
It had said that investigation was still pending only in one case relating to the Aircel-Maxis deal and involves Malaysian business tycoon T Ananda Krishnan against whom letter rogatory has been issued. P Chidambaram was questioned by the CBI in the case on December 6, 2014, while Karti was questioned on November 19, 2014.
On July 19, the CBI had filed a supplementary charge sheet before a special court against the Congress leader and his son for alleged irregularities and criminal conspiracy in the Aircel-Maxis deal case. Besides them, the CBI had also named 10 individuals, including public servants, and six companies as accused in the case.