Bar on taking leave

Karti Chidambaram’s counsel offered to undertake before the Chief Justice of India on Monday that he would go to England and return to join the investigation in the graft case registered against him by the CBI. His counsel, Gopal Subramanium, asserted that the son of the former Union finance minister was a respectable person who could be trusted to return, given his family is in India. The look-out notice prevailing against him involves a lot of “odium and ignominy”, it was pleaded. The Chief Justice was sceptical: he knew several respectable people giving such undertakings and never coming back, he said. He did not recount all of them, except mentioning one who was allowed to go to Malaysia with a promise to return, but one only saw his back. The court observed that Chidambaram couldn’t leave the country until he took part in the probe.