The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the Madras High Court order that had put on hold the look out circular issued by the Centre against Karti Chidambaram, son of former minister P Chidambaram, and others in connection with an alleged corruption case.
A bench comprising Chief Justice J S Khehar and D Y Chandrachud also issued a notice to Karti Chidambaram and others on an appeal filed by the Centre challenging the high court's order staying the look out circular. The bench stated that he should not go abroad till his petition in the high court against the first information report is decided. The investigation should not suffer, the court observed. The case will be heard again on Friday.
The court also asked Karti Chidambaram, a businessman and member of the Congress party, to cooperate with the investigation. He had been summoned two times to cooperate with the investigation, but he has not responded, the court observed. It said that if he was abroad, he should have shown his bonafides by requesting for another suitable date for examination. "That was the least he should have done," the judges said. He must participate in the investigation and satify the interrogators, they added.
Counsel for Chidambaram, Gopal Subramanium said that the CBI had issued look-out notice even before he could join the investigation. He came to know about the notice only when he moved writ petitions in the high court. The notice has interfered with his fundamental right to go abroad; he is not a fugitive, counsel asserted. When he described the events leading to the FIR, the judges told him that they were not interested in the facts of the case but the focus was only on the look-out notice.
According to CBI
Karti Chidambaram received kickbacks amounting to Rs. 3.5 crore from a private company, the INX media, in exchange for allowing them to make foreign investment. This was done through "influence in the finance ministry" while his father, P Chidambaram, was the finance minister, investigators say. The former minister had denied the allegation. "I had never allowed any family member to speak to me or to any officer of my ministry on any official matter," he had said and alleged political victimisation.