Parole for Sahara chief Subrata Roy ended as the Supreme Court directed that he be taken into custody.
The SC had granted parole to Roy on May 6 for four weeks to attend his mother’s last rights.
The court then extended his parole several times to enable him to deposit money with market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). Roy has been in Tihar jail since March 4, 2014 on the orders of the apex court in relation to a long running dispute with market regulator SEBI.
The Supreme Court has sent Sahara chief Subrata Roy back to prison. Roy was out on parole since May, after spending two years at Delhi’s Tihar Jail.
“You are going back to jail,” the court said today, rejecting a plea by Roy’s lawyers to extend parole for some more time. The 68-year-old head of the Sahara group had been granted parole when his mother died in May this year, and it had been extended several times since, the last for a week on September 16.
Rajeev Dhavan, the lawyer for Mr Roy, termed the court’s statement as “unfair”, arguing that Sahara couldn’t sell its properties as they had been attached by market regulator Sebi.
The judges however did not accept Mr Dhawan’s arguments.
“Don’t tell us what to do. Interim arrangement stands cancelled. Take Roy and two others (directors of Sahara group) be taken back to custody, ” they said.
The top court had earlier this month asked the Sahara Group to disclose how it had raised Rs 25,000 crore to pay back its investors in cash, observing that it was “difficult to digest” as such a huge amount “cannot fall from the heavens.”
The court had also directed Sebi to look into how Sahara was raising money through the sale of its property abroad, promising to “close this entire Pandora’s box if you show us the source of refund.”
In this long-running case, the Supreme Court had ordered Sahara in August 2012 to deposit with capital market Sebi over Rs 24,000 crore collected from nearly three crore investors through issuance of certain bonds.
