Two lives & the next three days

The lives of two flamboyant people have turned more complicated. Both dabbled in real estate and were seen as wizards of shady finance. Given their significance, let us give the island matters a miss.

Sahara India founder Subrata Roy's petition before judges K S Radhakrishnan and J S Khehar to spell out their order on Roy's custody yielded no result. The judges not only dismissed it, but also condemned the group's strategy of "frivolous litigation".

When the petition was filed, senior counsel Ram Jethmalani had pleaded for the judges to recuse themselves, as the arguments could embarrass them. After hearing the arguments and finding no merits, the judges 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."

In an unusual post script, the judges slammed the litigants' "compulsive obsession towards senseless and ill-considered claims" to prolong cases endlessly. "The suggestion to the legislature is to formulate a mechanism that anyone who initiates and continues litigation senselessly pays for the same," they said.

The judges also quantified the wastage of valuable "judge hours". Between November 28, 2011, and April 21, 2014, the Sahara matter was listed for hearing on 81 dates. "For the various orders passed by us, including the order dated August 8, 2012 (269 pages) and the present order (205 pages), substantial judge hours were consumed. In this country, judicial orders are prepared beyond court hours or on non-working days. It is apparent not a hundred, but hundreds of judge hours were spent in the instant single Sahara group litigation, just at the hands of the Supreme Court. This abuse of the judicial process needs to be remedied," the judges said.

About two years after the final order, the Sahara group continued to systematically defy orders, the court said. The order recorded the amount payable by the group at Rs 36,608 crore. The group's offer for upfront payment never exceeded even 10 per cent of this number. Even this, the group often claimed, would be deposited after Roy's release.

Either the group doesn't have the money to get its chief out or new power centres are emerging within the group, ready to sacrifice him to keep the group going. In any case, there is no closure in sight yet for the Securities and Exchange Board of India and investors yet. The only consolation seemed to be the group's apology for earlier advertisements against the regulator.

National Spot Exchange Ltd founder Jignesh Shah had handled his communications and legal issues with a lot more finesse. His spin doctors had even managed to make the world believe the crisis had been overcome and bad days were history. Coincidentally, soon after a full-page advertisement explaining the group's stand in the wake of a damaging special audit report, Shah was taken into custody. In another quirky coincidence, which might worsen matters, Shah's Man Friday, Anjani Sinha, has been granted bail.

The position and say of leaders in the new government who are close to these two could be crucial. Or, have these leaders, too, washed their hands of the matter? We will get some clues after the next three days.