M J Antony on one instance where justice is seen to be done

This set of executives belonged to the financial companies which collected massive funds from the ordinary investors promising them dividends from cash investments and plantations. Among them are JVG Group of Companies, the Kuber Group, Okara Agro Group, the Hoffland Finance and Al Falah Finlease Ltd.

Many of their directors and executives have been shut up in jails for months now. The trial has not even started. They approached the Supreme Court complaining that their stay in prisons in different states, even before they are found guilty, was violative of their fundamental right to life and liberty.

The government counsel explained their operations in great detail in the court and called them “economic murder”. Their tentacles spread over a large number of states. Very often, after starting their business in one state by luring investors with high returns, they would move to another state repeating the same promises to pay the earlier commitments.

To pay the promised returns in the second state, they would move to the third state for fresh funds. This and other methods brought them great wealth but, in the end, it ended in misery for all the players. Several disappointed investors committed suicide and the companies were wound up and the businessmen are facing charges of cheating and other offences.

Rejecting the plea for release from prisons, the Supreme Court asked: “In a country like ours, if an accused is alleged to have deceived millions of countrymen who have invested their entire life’s saving in such fictitious and frivolous companies promoted by the accused and when thousands of cases are pending against an accused in different parts of the country, can an accused at all complain of infringement of Article 21 [life and liberty] on the ground that he is not being able to be released out of jail custody in view of different production warrants issued by different courts?”

It said that it would not bestow misplaced sympathy on these white-collared accused persons who have ruined a vast majority of poor citizens of this country.

However, the court recommended to the central government to evolve some procedure so that the accused would not complain of undue harassment on account of prolonged trial. Even the persons who have been deceived would be satisfied with the early curtains to the trials.

The court was not inclined to consolidate all the cases in one court as demanded by the accused. At present, charge-sheets are slapped in several states regarding the same offence against the same persons. Therefore, they are wanted in different criminal courts all over the country. On the other hand, the investors who have prosecuted them are also spread over the entire country.

If the cases are concentrated in one court in one place, complainants and witnesses would find it difficult to travel to the designated courts from the rest of the country. Therefore, the court declined their request to transfer all the cases to one criminal court.

This, the Supreme Court said, was because each individual deposit agreement shall have to be treated as separate and individual transaction brought about by the allurement of the financial companies, since the parties are different, the amount of deposit is different, as also the period for which the deposit was effected.

Their plea for exemption from personal appearance and transfer of the investigations to the CBI were also rejected. The accused might think that they have already been punished enough by the criminal justice system, but this is one instance where justice is seen to be done, at least by the investors.