New Delhi: The Supreme Court Friday agreed to hear a plea of CBI against mobile service providers Vodafone and Airtel that they were not cooperating with the investigation in Saradha chit fund scam case.
CBI claimed that they were not providing it full call detail records (CDRs) of the accused in the scam despite repeated requests. A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna issued notice and sought the reply of mobile service providers by April 8, the next date of hearing.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for CBI, said the service providers were not cooperating with the probe agency despite repeated requests for the CDRs. Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the companies, denied the allegations and said that they are providing all the necessary assistance to the agency.
CBI had recently filed a status report relating to the interrogation of the then Kolkata Police commissioner Rajeev Kumar in connection with the scam. The apex court had on March 26 termed as “very very serious” the revelations made by the CBI in its status report relating to interrogation of Kumar.
The top court had said that it cannot “close its eyes” if some “very very serious facts” were disclosed to it and directed the agency to file an application seeking appropriate relief against Kumar, who had earlier headed the state SIT to probe the chit fund scam.
It was hearing CBI’s contempt application against various senior officials of the West Bengal government on the ground of non-cooperation in its probe and alleged tampering of evidence, including CDRs of key accused and Sardha group CMD Sudipta Sen and Debjani Mukherjee.
