The Sahara Group on Tuesday told the Supreme Court that it was not possible for it to repay, in 18 months, Rs.36,000 crore of investors’ money that it had collected in 2007-08 in 18 months as was ordered by the court on June 17.
“There is no business house in the country or in the world which can deposit Rs.36,000 crore in 18 months time,” senior counsel Kapil Sibal, appearing for jailed Sahara chief Subrata Roy, told a bench of Justice TS Thakur, Justice Anil R Dave and Justice AK Sikri.
He said that he was getting an application ready that would be moved in a week’s time pointing to the difficulty in arranging Rs.36,000 crore to return the investors money.
His admission came as Justice Thakur asked him that suppose Sahara was not able to repay the entire amount.
At this, senior counsel Arvind Datar, appearing for market regulator SEBI, told the court that Sahara had told in the past that it can and would return the investors money and it had the resources to do so.
In response, Sibal said: “If I have told the court that I can and I will pay but if I am not abler to (return) then I can be sent to jail.”
The apex court had June 19 given Sahara’s two companies - SIRECL and SHFCL - 18 months to repay the investors’ money which they had collected in 2007-08 through OFCDs.
Subrata Roy and two directors of the Sahara group were sent to judicial custody for its failure to comply withy its August 31, 2012 and December 2012 order to return investors Rs.24,000 crore along with 15 percent interest. The total amount along with interest component now stands at Rs. 36,000 crore.
Telling the court that they stood on a stronger wicket asd far as their claim that they have already paid a substantial amount of investors money, Sibal told the court that the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal has accepted that two Sahara companies have already returned money of the 85 percent of the investors.
He said that thought its contention was not accepted by the Income Tax authorities but the same has found favour with the appellate tribunal.
As the court asked him that he had submitted all the documents to SEBI and which were the documents he was referring to, Sibal said that these were PAN card numbers showing TDS
In the meanwhile, the court asked a Gorakhpur-based real estate developers to deposit a bank draft of Rs. 11 crores - 10 percent of Rs.110 crore that it has offered to pay for buying 54.71 acres of Sahara land in the eastern Uttar Pradesh town. The court said that the draft should be favouring secretary general, Supreme Court.
This is nearly double of Rs.65 crore that Sahara has told the court it was getting for the same land from another developer.
As Sahara objected to the offer saying that it would come in the way of the release of Subrata Roy from jail and it was about to get Rs.65 crore from the first buyer, the court asked the new buyer to deposit Rs.65 crore immediately and the remaining Rs.45 crore in three to four months.
As counsel appearing for the new buyer wanted time to take instructions, the court gave him time till Monday with a rider that he would deposit a demand draft of Rs. 11 crores by Wednesday to establish his bonafide.
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I have stopped deluding myself that the "law" exists in the sense we read when studying law.. or are told by our well-wishers (family, friends, teachers etc).
And i no longer think it is reasonable to expect that the world must operate like the teachings of a principled texbook. In fact Nowhere on the planet is it so. One may preach principles. But please not try to expect principled behavior from those who believe not.
Power flows from wherever it does. To grudge that and to expect things to be 'right', is... well, childish.
India is a remarkable story. Numbingly lopsided, ill-managed, unfair and brutal.
And yet, attractive to a large segment of the world's rich folks. Because in all this "jungle-raaj", there are tremendous arbitrage opportunities and to be rich and create a buffer of obscene wealth is a sure way to cordon oneself off most if not all externalities. All ok by me at one level.
What I do get worried about, is how/what can parents teach in terms of universal values to their children? What will make the world better? Are we even trusting ourselves with the responsibility of being 'higher' beings? Or has 'humanity' already thrown in the towel??
You've made a very incisive comment and one I agree with to a great extent, especially where I think you might have satire and sarcasm mixed with the truth about what it means to survive in India.
Sure, the law is bent and broken all over the world, but India and its higher judiciary stand in a class of their own, and the latter is all the more galling given the hypocritical paeans that are sung to our judiciary. Its a brutal hell-hole for those who become "prey" in this jungle-raj.
I realize how entrenched this power based distortion of Indian society is, but being a lawyer, I can't help noting and speaking about injustice and corruption of the rule of law by the courts.
Until precisely five years ago, I would have shared your nonchalance to an extent, but I have become caught up in a situation where I became the target of powerful people and entities for what I knew. I turned to the "law" for protection and faced its indifference to me, my rights and my very existence at a very personal level.
I guess when you become an unwitting victim of this jungle-raj, you can't remain indifferent to its brutality and hypocrisy anymore.
I have frankly lost all respect for our higher judiciary and for our Bar as an institution and for more lawyer 'colleagues' than I care to count.
Well 'life happens' and the fight must go on.
We must all eventually answer to our own conscience.
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