Illegal telephone exchange case: Maran brothers to face trial, as SC dismisses plea

NEW DELHI:  The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a plea filed by industrialist Kalanithi Maran challenging a Madras High Court verdict of setting aside a trial court order discharging him in a case relating to the alleged setting up of illegal telephone exchanges.A bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi rejected Maran’s plea, following which he, along with his brother and former Union telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran and others, would have to face trial in the case.

On July 30, the apex court had rejected a similar plea filed by Dayanidhi Maran challenging the high court’s July 25 order and asked him to face trial in the case.In the oral observation, the bench had said, “These are matters to be decided in trial. The HC had interfered because you were the Telecom Minister at the relevant time. You got a PLI line installed at your house. You had 30 baby telephone lines from this PLI line. In turn, these 30 lines had 300 different telephone lines. And these were used for business of your brother (Kalanithi) who ran a TV channel.”

According to the CBI, an illegal private telephone exchange was set up at the residence of Dayanidhi Maran in Chennai during 2004-06 when he was the telecom minister and it was used for the business transactions involving the Sun Network owned by Kalanithi. It alleged that Maran had caused a loss of Rs 1.78 crore to the exchequer.Other accused in the case included former BSNL general manager K Brahmanathan, former deputy general manager M P Velusamy, Maran’s private secretary Gauthaman and some Sun TV officials.