
Following a complaint by advocate Prashant Bhushan, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said the CBI cannot complete the investigation within four weeks as promised earlier due to discovery of certain new facts and dimensions in the case and submitted the status report of the investigation by the CBI and ED to a bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justice J Bagchi.
“I will not be able to answer the allegation as to why some were arrested and not others,” Mehta said.
The bench, which on March 23 had expressed displeasure over the apparent reluctance of the investigating agencies to proceed against ADAG group companies, said it would pass further orders after seeing the status report and posted the matter for further hearing on May 8.
During the last hearing, Anil Ambani’s lawyer Mukul Rohatgi had said that ADAG is ready to discuss with banks and financial institutions regarding settlement of dues.
On Thursday, senior advocate Kapil Sibal appeared for him and told the bench that the court needs to know the background of the case, which is important.
Taking cues from the subject matter of the PIL, which alleged that huge sums of money were taken by ADAG companies as loans from banks and then insolvency proceedings were initiated only to have these companies taken over by relatives for a song, lawyer Prabhas Bajaj said such scams are widespread in insolvency proceedings.
When he cited the example of solvent companies being taken over cheaply by other companies through insolvency proceedings, causing huge losses to banks, the bench said it would not go into individual cases.
“Our effort is to dispel the perception that big players involved in such cases get away easily,” it said.