Hyderabad High Court seeks ideas on refunding money

Hyderabad: The Hyderabad High Court on Monday asked the petitioners, managements of Agri Gold and Akshaya Gold and TS and AP governments to suggest alternatives to auction the properties of the two companies without the involvement of the court. A division bench comprising Justice V. Ramasubra-manian and Justice S.V. Bhatt was dealing with a batch of petitions filed by AgriGold and Akshaya Gold Depositors and the agents and depositors associations and others seeking a CBI probe into the scam and for recovery of the money.

The bench said that in view of the poor response, and successful bidders backing off, some depositors asking for land instead of deposits, it was not possible to satisfy all 32 lakh depositors. Mr K. Sravan Kumar, counsel for the petitioners, said the CID had not filed a chargesheet in three years. He urged the court to adopt the procedure followed by the Supreme Court in the Sahara case, and to examine the issue of constitution of a committee as was done in the Satyam case.

Mr L. Ravi Chander, senior counsel, appearing for AgriGold, said that it was not possible to deposit money as in the Sahara case. Mr Krishna Prakash, special counsel of AP, said there was no truth in the petitioner's allegation as the CID probe was going on and several arrests had been made. The bench posted the matter to March 22.