Court mulls relaxing condition for Roy's release

There was some relief for Sahara group chief Subrata Roy on Wednesday, as a Bench of Supreme Court judges observed it was contemplating relaxing the terms for his release from jail. A special hearing will take place on Thursday.

Roy and two Sahara group directors, in judicial custody since March 4, have been lodged at Tihar jail here. The Supreme Court had earlier ordered that the group would have to pay Rs 10,000 crore in instalments for their release. However, their counsel has since told the Bench of judges K S Radhakrishnan and J S Khehar that the condition for release is impossible to meet and the detention is illegal and unconstitutional.

When the lawyers said the group was not able to pay the dues to the investors in optionally fully-convertible debentures issued by two Sahara companies as its bank accounts were frozen, the judges said they would consider defreezing the accounts if an application, with account numbers, was moved.

The judges explained the detention order was not "pre-written", as alleged by Sahara counsel Rajiv Dhavan. The grievance of lawyers Dhavan and Ram Jethmalani was that they were taken by surprise by the court's detention order, even before the case being fully argued. They claimed the order, which came in the middle of the proceedings, was unconstitutional and the Bench had no power to do so.

Besides, a businessman could not raise money to be paid while sitting in jail. No one would meet him there, counsel Ram Jethmalani and Dhavan said, arguing a writ petition challenging Roy's detention as illegal.

During the day-long arguments, the judges seemed prepared to relax the condition for Roy's release. They said they had thought of modifying certain conditions in view of his inability to pay the amount, though they had not yet reached a conclusion.

Last week, the court had turned down Roy's request for a house arrest. Requests for home food and increasing the present number of phone calls and their duration (three calls of three minutes each) were also rejected.

The Sahara group claims to have paid 90 per cent of the money required to be refunded to 30 million investors in the bonds floated by Sahara India Real Estate Corp and Sahara Housing Finance Corp. But the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), to which the companies were asked to make payments for refund to investors, has vehemently denied the claim and said it has received only Rs 5,200 crore of the Rs 37,000 crore due (including interest). The Sahara firms made several proposals to repay the dues in the past 17 hearings, but the judges were not convinced. This led to the detention of Roy and two directors.