The Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednes-day informed the Supreme Court of a new twist in the 2G case against former communications minister Dayanidhi Maran, with one of the complainants who levelled serious charges against him in the Aircel-Maxis deal now asking the CBI director to stop the investigation against the DMK leader, calling him “innocent”.
NGO Telecom Watchdog’s secretary Anil Kumar, one of three petitioners who sought a CBI probe against Mr Maran, now alleged in his letter that Chennai-based Aircel founder C. Sivasankaran had “cooked up” the story about Mr Maran “coercing” him to sell his stake in Aircel to Malaysia-based company Maxis in order to get a “better price”, CBI counsel K.K. Venugopal told the court.
This revelation before a bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and K.S. Radhakrishanan came as a “shocker”, with the court observing “this may be for some consideration”, and ordered Mr Kumar to submit a sworn affidavit within a week to explain the “reasons and circumstances” under which he had written directly to the CBI director while his petition was pending in the court.
Mr Kumar was also directed to explain the reason behind his publishing an article in a magazine giving “clean chit” to Mr Maran before writing the letter to the CBI director.
The CBI may question Mr Maran again by the end of April to expedite its investigation.