Making this submission before a Bench of Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice Deepak Verma, senior counsel Ashok Desai, appearing for Mr. Raju, referred to the letter written by Mr. Raju on January 7, 2009 wherein he had only mentioned about inflating the shares as he apprehended that the shares would be purchased by outsiders and the management would be taken over by others.
Mr. Desai said, “I am not saying it is a fair practice in corporate functioning. I will not approve it. I am only pointing out that there is no siphoning of the money from the company.”
The counsel said, “if you take the letter on the face value there is no admission of crime in it as had been made out by the CBI in its chargesheet.”
To a question from Justice Verma “will it not lead to duping others who would be buying inflated shares,” Mr. Desai said “I am not commending the principle. The whole idea is that thousands of crores of the company's investments were buried abroad and were at stake.”
When Justice Bhandari wanted to know whether other companies also resorted to such practice of inflating their shares, Mr. Desai said “companies do inflate their shares to ensure that their shares are not purchased by the competitors.”
On the submission of Additional Solicitor General Harin Raval that Mr. Raju had written a letter to a company and had influenced the witnesses, Mr. Desai said the letter was written much before the date of occurrence and it had no relevance to this case.
Citing various Supreme Court judgments, Mr. Desai said that once bail was granted by the court, it should not be cancelled.
He said though the Supreme Court had the power to cancel the bail, it should be resorted to only in rare and compelling reasons and no such reasons existed in this case. Arguments will continue on Tuesday.
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