New Delhi: Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) yesterday moved the Supreme Court seeking the arrest and imprisonment of Sahara group chief Subrata Roy and two other directors of the group for not complying with a Supreme Court order to refund Rs24bn to its investors.
The court said it would hear the matter after its Holi break starting on March 25.
Mentioning the matter before a bench headed by Justice K S Radhakrishnan, Sebi also sought the court’s direction to restrain Roy and other directors from leaving the country and surrender their passports to the secretary general of the court.
The market regulator’s plea sought the nod to “take measures for arrest and detention in civil prison of promoter of Sahara Subrata Roy Sahara and the two male directors — Ashok Roy Choudhary and Ravi Shankar Dubey — after giving reasonable opportunity of hearing”.
Sebi, which has been asked to recover Rs24bn from Sahara group’s two real estate companies to pay three crore investors, also sought the court’s nod to appoint an officer on special duty to oversee the sale of Sahara properties attached so far.
The Sahara group’s two real estate companies — Sahara India Real Estate Corporation Ltd and Sahara Housing Investment Corporation Ltd — were directed by the court on August 31, 2012 to return the investors’ money with 15 percent interest.
Sebi had begun attaching two real estate companies’ properties after their failure to pay the sum by the February 2013 deadline.
The apex court, by an order on December 5, 2012, had directed the Sahara real estate companies to deposit all the money they had collected from investors through optionally fully-convertible debentures by the first week of February.
IANS
