March 8: Refusing to give any breathing space to the government on its hard pursuit on the black money trail, the Supreme Court on Tuesday told the Centre that the case against Pune-based stud farm owner Hasan Ali Khan has far serious dimensions requiring invoking of stronger “penal” provisions.
The top court even hinted of looking into the matter with the angle of anti-terror and anti-organised crime laws and not merely confine the probe to money laundering, foreign exchange and income-tax violations while the senior advocate, Mr Anil Diwan, pursuing a PIL on the issue, pleaded for full security to Khan and setting up of a special investigating team (SIT) to investigate black money issue considering the very complex nature of it.
“Most important on the basis of the information in status report, there is an angle… relations (of Khan) with some arms dealer... angle of terror,” a bench of Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and S.S. Nijjar told the solicitor-general, Mr Gopal Subramaniam, while pushing the government hard on the matter.
While acknowledging that the concerns expressed by the top court, especially relating to Khan’s role were “fully justified”, but when the solicitor-general wondered whether the court was talking about “national security angle?” Justice Reddy, shot back “Yes! national security.”
The strong comments came from the top court after it had a “cursory” look a the status report of ED, filed in a “sealed cover” by its director, Mr Arun Mathur.