The Supreme Court on Friday ordered the provisional release of Sahara group Chief Subrata Roy for four weeks. Roy and his brother-in-law Ashok Roy Choudhary, who were lodged in Tihar jail since March 2014, had moved an application seeking provisional release for three weeks to perform the last rites of Roy’s mother Chhabi Roy, who died in the early hours of Friday. She was 95 and had been critically ill for over two years.
Subrata Roy has been in Tihar Jail for more than two years in relation with a long running dispute with markets regulator Sebi.
A Sahara group spokesperson said in a statement that Chhabi Roy had been the “guiding light of the Sahara India Pariwar and departed for her heavenly abode at 1.34 am today”.
Roy, Roy Choudhary and Ravi Shankar Dubey were lodged in Tihar jail in March 2014 for not complying with the apex court’s orders relating to refund of money raised by two group firms. The court had ordered Sahara India Real Estate Corp and Sahara Housing Invest Corp to deposit with Sebi, a sum of over Rs. 24,029 crore raised from some 29.6 million bondholders, along with interest of 15 per cent.
Roy and the group claimed that these have been refunded directly to the bondholders. Sebi and the court have not agreed to these arguments and insisted on the full payment of the sum, which has now swelled to around Rs. 40,000 crore.
In March 2014, the apex court had set bail conditions of Rs. 5,000 crore in cash and an equal amount in bank guarantee. Sahara is Rs. 100 crore short of the cash component and has not been able to come up with the bank guarantee.
