Subrata is beSahara

New Delhi:  Asserting that the “arms of the court are very long”, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the arrest of Sahara chief Subrata Roy for defying its order for personal appearance in a contempt case arising out of non refund of '20,000 crore to investors. Livid with his non-appearance, a bench of Justices K S Radhakrishnan and J S Khehar brushed aside the defence of 65-year-old Roy for his non-appearance on the ground that he had to be on the bed side of his ailing 92-year-old mother.
“The arms of this court are very long. Yesterday only we had refused your plea for exemption from personal appearance. We will issue the non bailable warrant. This is the Supreme Court of the land,” the bench obser-ved at the start of the proceedings in a jam-packed court with several officials of the company present for the hearing. On February 20, the SC had come down heavily on the Sahara group for not refunding '20,000 crore of investors money despite its order and summoned Roy, Ravi Sha-nkar Dubey, Ashok Roy Choudhary and Vandana Bhargava, directors of its firms — Sahara India Real Estate Corp Ltd (SIREC) and Sahara India Housing Investment Corp Ltd (SHIC) to be personally present before it on February 26.
Mr Jethmalani sought to explain Roy’s non-appearance by saying that he was sitting at the bedside of his ailing mother and holding her hand. He also placed before the bench the medical certificate on Roy’s mother’s ill health and said, on all earlier occasions, the Sahara chief had complied with the apex court’s orders. How-ever, the bench said, “for last two years we have been seeing what's happening in the matter”. The apex court had on Tuesday rejected Roy’s plea seeking exemption from personal appearance and had asked him to be present before it on Wednesday. The bench had made it clear that “rule of law” has to be maintained and Roy has to comply with its February 20 order in which he along with three directors of his companies have been summoned to appear.
During an earlier hearing, the bench had observed that Sebi could go ahead with the sale of properties of the group whose sale deeds were handed over to the market regulator to recover '20,000 crore. “Those properties you can sell. We allow you to sell them and recover the money. If they are encumbered properties then you can file criminal cases against the company. The case must be brought to a logical conclusion,” the bench had said.