Karti shifts petition from SC to High Court for Friday hearing
New Delhi : Karti Chidambaram, son of former union finance minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram, on Thursday shifted his petition from the Supreme Court to Delhi High Court to stop his possible arrest by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the INX Media case after the Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra directed the High Court chief justice to constitute a Bench to hear his prayer for interim relief on Friday.
The High Court will in most likelihood deal with his prayer Friday morning while his prayer for bail before the special CBI judge in the Patiala Courts here is listed at 2 PM on completion of his extended custody of nine days to the CBI. He fears that the ED may detain or arrest him as soon as out from the CBI custody since the ED has issued summons to him for the same transaction that prompted the CBI to arrest him at Chennai last week on arrival from London.
The Bench, which also included Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud, allowed senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Manu Singhvi to withdraw the petition, noting in its order that Karti will move the High Court in the course of the day to facilitate the hearing there on an interim bail on Friday.
Sibal and Singhvi first insisted that the ED should not arrest Karti for the same transaction that has already been fully investigated by the CBI on the charge that he allegedly received money for helping INX Media in the foreign investment clearance in 2007 when his father P Chidambaram. They said the ED has neither an FIR nor a complaint to act against Karti, just on the basis of an enforcement case information report (ECIR), an internal document not available to them.
They, however, changed tactic to allow them to move the High Court after the Court appeared agreeing to Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta’s submission that any interim protection to Karti would set a wrong precedent in 50 similar cases involving “ordinary criminals” that were pending before the court.