SC rejects plea for SIT on ‘payoffs’ to Modi, VIPs

Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, November 25

The Supreme Court today described as “zero or nothing” the material provided by a petitioner to set up a special investigation team (SIT) to go into allegations of payoffs by two companies to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other VVIPs ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha election.

“We cannot initiate action just because you have named a big person,” a Bench comprising Justices JS Khehar and Arun Mishra told senior counsel Shanti Bhushan and Ram Jethmalani. “This is just insinuation,” the Bench told the petitioner, NGO Common Cause.

Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi opposed the petitioner’s plea which was nothing but “scandalous and kite flying”.

The Bench pointed out that the allegations were based on some computer data entry papers seized during raids on the two companies in 2013-14. The documents of one of the companies, the Sahara group, were already found fake during the proceedings in another case pertaining to the investment scam involving collection of about Rs 25,000 crore by the group in the form of debentures, subsequently declared illegal by stock market regulator SEBI.

“Who has made the computer entries? Anybody can make hundreds of such entries naming people. Thousands of unscrupulous persons make entries. There should be some supporting material, something prima facie. At the moment, there is nothing. If such computer entries can form the basis, you can rope in the entire world,” the Bench remarked.

The apex court told the petitioner to gather “quite a bit more” of material by December 14, failing which the NGO should withdraw its plea. The petitioner pleaded that the entries showed that money was paid to the then Gujarat CM.