New Delhi: The Supreme Court yesterday rejected Sahara chief Subrata Roy’s plea challenging its March 4 order sending him to judicial custody for not complying with the verdict to return investors’ money routed through SEBI.
Roy and two Sahara directors Ashok Roy Choudhary and Ravi Shankar Dubey were sent to judicial custody for failure of Sahara Group’s companies SIRECL and SHICL to comply with the court’s order to return Rs24000 crore collected from investors through optionally fully convertible debentures (OFCDs).
Of the sum ordered to be returned, Sahara deposited Rs5,210 crore with the Securities and Exchange Board of India in December 2012. Roy will continue to remain in custody as the court has asked his counsel to make a revised proposal to return investors’ money to secure his release.
Holding there was “no merit” in Roy’s plea and “same is dismissed”, a bench of Justice K S Radhakrishnan and Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar in their judgment said: “Disobedience of orders of a court strikes at the very root of the rule of law, on which the judicial system rests. Judicial orders are bound to be obeyed at all costs.”
“Howsoever grave the effect may be that is no answer for non-compliance of a judicial order. Judicial orders cannot be permitted to be circumvented,” said Justice Khehar speaking for the bench.
Rejecting Roy’s contention that Justice Radhakrishnan and Justice Khehar should recuse from hearing his plea, the court said: “Calculated psychological offensives and mind games adopted to seek recusal of judges need to be strongly repulsed. We deprecate such tactics and commend a similar approach to other courts, when they experience such behaviour.”
Addressing Roy’s contention that the court had no power to send him to judicial custody for non-compliance of its order, the bench said: “In exercise of contempt jurisdiction, courts have the power to enforce compliance of judicial orders, and also, the power to punish for contempt.”
IANS
