While admitting industrialist Rattan Tata’s petition for probe into the “leak” of the “Radia tapes” recorded by the income-tax department in connection with investigation of the tax frauds, the Supreme Court on Thursday issued notices to the Centre, IT DG, CBI and two media organisations which had published the transcripts of the tapes.
The top court, which received the originals of the Radia tapes from the director general (Investigation) of IT and ordered their safe custody under seal with the court registry, sought reply affidavits from the Union home ministry, finance ministry, IT department and the CBI on Tata’s petition for probe into the leak. Media organisations — Outlook and Open Magazine — which published the transcripts were also made parties to the case by Tata after a bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly asked his counsel Harish Salve why the media organisations were left out the list of respondents if Tata wanted a probe in the leak.
Both the media organisations were consequently issued notices by the court while giving all the respondents 10 days time to submit their replies. The bench fixed further hearing on Tata’s petition on December 13. However, Tata’s counsel did not press for interim stay on further publication while Attorney-General G.E. Vahnvati said that such a direction has been sought by them. “They are asking for direction against further publication, how can we do it,” the A-G said. The bench also raised several queries about the contents of Tata’s petition, saying “it is not clear from the petition what has been published (on which Tata has objection).”
“We do not get it from the petition,” the bench said while responding to the argument of Salve, who said that the concern of his client was that his private conversations with Nira Radia, the corporate lobbyist had been put in public domain though it has nothing to do with any public cause.
“My concern is that the audio files are personal in nature, are you going to allow these to be published in media. They are unrelated to any public cause,” Tata’s counsel said pointing out how his purely personal interaction like dinner party and his dislike for the same were being debated in public.
“If a person is invited for a dinner and he expresses his dislike for the dinner parties will it be published in media. It amounts to violation of his privacy,” Mr Salve said.
“The IT department had claimed that they had recorded 5,000 hours conversation. We are concerned about what has not been published of such long hours recording,” Salve said while appreciating the action of the apex court to take custody of original tapes.
Tata in his petition has sought investigation into the “leak” of the conversations to media, appropriate action under the relevant law against the officials responsible for the leak and stay on any further publication.
However, the bench said that without hearing the other sides it could not be possible for the court to pass any order and posted further hearing for December 13.