CBI court failed to consider many aspects: Mittal to SC

Mittal had filed the petition, seeking CBI special court summons against him be quashed

In a special leave petition before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Bharti Airtel Chairman Sunil Mittal said it couldn't be said the managing directors or the directors of a company had committed an offence merely because they held offices in the companies concerned.

Mittal had filed the petition yesterday, seeking the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) special court summons against him be quashed.

In his petition, Mittal said the CBI court had made an error in issuing a summons in a criminal case under the Prevention of Corruption Act on the basis of the presumption a company's officer was responsible for its acts, not on the basis of factual material.

The petition also said the judge had failed to consider the law in the context of vicarious criminal liability of managing directors, directors and other officers of companies - in the absence of specific statutory provisions making individual actors liable, there would be no vicarious criminal liability imposed on any act of any corporation.

It said the judge had also failed to consider the law that criminal responsibility could be affixed to an individual only if it had statutory backing. The judge also failed to consider the absence of vicarious criminal responsibility was specially recognised for offences under Section 120-B of the Indian Penal Code and Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, which didn't contain any such statutory deeming fiction, the petition said.

It added the special court had failed to appreciate the principles of attribution, the doctrine of "alter ego" and "directing mind and will" were applied to determine whether to attribute the acts and the mental state of individuals working on behalf of the corporation, to the corporation.

It also stated the views of the CBI director and other documents were scrutinised by the court while passing the order dated November 29, 2012. The order arbitrarily rejected various institutional safeguards and high ranking statutory or constitutional functionaries involved in scrutinising the charge sheet. The rejection of such safeguards was all the more unreasonable, since it was based on non-existent deeming fictions, not on any aspect that were not, or could not have been, considered by the authorities, the petition said.