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HC adjourns hearing on Hindujas' plea to leave India

The Hinduja brothers, facing trial in the Rs 64 crore (Rs 640 million) Bofors payoff case, will not be able to leave India until February 26 when the Delhi high court will hear their petitions challenging a trial court's decision disallowing their plea to go out of the country.

Justice S K Agarwal, before whom their petitions came up for hearing on Wednesday, adjourned the case to February 26 despite a plea for an early hearing from counsel for the brothers, London-based S P and G P Hinduja and Geneva-based P P Hinduja.

Counsel for the brothers submitted that the apprehension of the trial court that they would run away from the trial was unfounded.

"The CBI apprehension is an idle apprehension. They are finding an excuse," senior advocate Kapil Sibal said.

Sibal and senior advocate Rajinder Singh, in their hour-long arguments, said there was no basis to the CBI's fear because the brothers had chosen to appear before the trial court "voluntarily, without receiving any summons".

They said that since the special court had fixed the scrutiny of documents for March 19, on which day they should be present, there was no basis for the CBI to fear that they might not appear in court.

They said the trial in the case might not begin for years as the CBI is yet to get Ottavio Quattrocchi and Martin Ardbo, the other two accused, extradited from Malaysia and Sweden, respectively.

The Hindujas' counsel said that by denying them permission to go out of the country, the trial court had "curtailed" its own order granting them bail.

"Bail conditions cannot curtail the liberty of an accused altogether. But the condition in the bail order that the Hindujas will not leave the country without the court's permission is so prohibitory that it amounts to denying them bail," Sibal and Singh argued.

Pleading that the Hindujas be allowed to go back to the UK and Switzerland, their counsel said it could test the "bona fides" of their commitment to appear in the trial court on March 19.

The CBI, in its affidavit, said its apprehension was based on the fact that after the Swiss authorities sent the Bofors documents to India in December 1999, the Hindujas stopped visiting the country.

The CBI said it had repeatedly requested the Hindujas to appear before it after receiving the Bofors documents, but the brothers joined the investigation only after the trial court directed them to do so last month.

PTI

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