Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Friday ordered former finance minister P Chidambaram and two top serving bureaucrats -- KP Krishnan and Ramesh Abhishek -- to file their replies in 63 Moons damages suit, if any, within four weeks. The trio has been asked to defend themselves as they are accused of engineering the National Spot Exchange Ltd (NSEL) payment default crisis.
Though the advocate appearing for the trio sought four more weeks time for filing their replies, the bench of Justice Anil Menon, was initially reluctant. "Enough time has been given to you to file your replies. This would be the last chance," Justice Menon said.
The bench granted additional four weeks time after Chidambaram's advocate apprised the judge of the fact that his client was in jail in a money laundering case and thus couldn't keep the date for filing reply.
The HC had on July 24 issued summons to Chidambaram and the two babus, asking them to appear before the court either personally or through their counsels.
The founder of the 63 moons technologies, formerly Financial Technologies Ltd (FTIL), filed a Rs 10,000 crore damages suit against Chidambaram and two others stating that it has been continuously targeted and facing mala fide actions in the wake of an engineered payment default crisis at one of its subsidiaries - NSEL. It has further claimed that there is no money trail traced to NSEL, 63 moons and its founder Jignesh Shah by multiple investigative agencies.
“We're singularly targeted by Chidambaram, Krishnan and Abhishek, who conspired against our group of companies and had a vested interest to protect the National Stock Exchange (NSE),” the suit claims. While Krishnan is the secretary of the ministry of skill development, Ramesh Abhishek, then Chairman of forwarding market commission (FMC), is the outgoing Secretary of the department for industrial policy and promotion (DPIIT).
The suit further alleged these malicious actions perpetrated by the trio against 63 moons have caused a damage of Rs 10,000 crore to its shareholders.
The company has also filed criminal complaints against the trio with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) "along with supporting material". It has claimed that Chidambaram and others had a ‘dubious’ role in the entire fiasco.
