SC nod to Karti's travel to UK from Sept 20

The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed senior Congress leader P Chidambaram's son Karti to travel to the UK from September 20 to September 30.

Despite Enforcement Directorate's (ED) objection that Karti has been "blatantly misusing" the liberty granted to him by the court, a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud allowed his plea.

The ED had yesterday told the apex court that Karti was using the liberty granted by the court to protract the investigation in the cases against him.

Karti has been facing criminal cases being investigated by the ED and the CBI.

One of the cases relates to FIPB clearance to INX Media for receiving foreign funds of Rs 305 crore when his father was the finance minister.

The ED had said that Karti, who is also facing proceedings in cases like Aircel-Maxis and money laundering matters, has been "blatantly misusing" the liberty granted by court in allowing him to travel abroad and has been using the same to protract the investigation in the case.

The ED had said the liberty granted to him by the apex court is "blatantly and brazenly hampering, subverting, jeopardising and protracting" the investigation pending against him in the Aircel Maxis Case, which the agency has to complete in six months.

The agency in its reply also said: "The petitioner (Karti) during this period of 6 months has remained unavailable for investigation for a total number of 51 days due to his foreign visits."
The reply filed by Rajeev Sharma, Deputy Director of ED, said, "Whenever he was confronted with the documents, he showed his irritation, sometimes anger and then conveniently avoided to answer the questions on one pretext or the other."