Hindujas barred from leaving India

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, APRIL 27. The Delhi High Court today refused to allow the three Hinduja brothers facing prosecution in the multi-crore Bofors pay-off case, Mr. Gopichand P. Hinduja, Mr. Prakash P. Hinduja and Mr. Srichand P. Hinduja, to go abroad.

The Central Bureau of Investigation chargesheeted the three brothers in December last year. They appeared before a Special Court for CBI cases on summons in January and then the special judge, Mr. Ajit Bharihoke, granted them bail.

However, the special judge refused to allow them permission to go abroad which they had sought immediately after they were granted bail, taking the plea that they had to attend to important business matters in different countries. The Judge also asked them not to leave the country without the court's permission.

It was against these orders that the three brothers had filed revision petitions in the high court urging it to quash the lower court orders.

But Mr. Justice S.K. Aggarwal of the high court refused to interfere with Mr. Bharihoke's orders.

``....Taking into consideration the nature and gravity of the offence, conduct of the petitioners and the fact that they have no immoveable or moveable assets in this country, apprehension of the prosecution that the petitioners may not be available before the court, if they feel that proceedings of the case are going adverse to them, cannot be said to be unfounded,'' Mr. Aggarwal said while rejecting their petitions.

The judge concurred with the CBI argument that for nine long years, the three brothers succeeded in blocking transmission of the second set of documents revealing nine payments of SEK 81 millions by Messrs A.B. Bofors in three different code name bank accounts of Messrs Mc Intyre Corporation between May and December 1986.

Opposing the petitions, counsel for the CBI submitted that the petitioners had been visiting India regularly from 1991 till 1999; however, after the Swiss Federal Court dismissed their appeal and allowed transmission of the documents to Indian authorities, they stopped visiting India.

They did not participate in the investigations despite repeated requests on 12.1.2000, 26.1.2000, 23.3.2000 and 12.5.2000, the CBI counsel submitted.

The Judge's observed: ``It may be mentioned that the petitioners succeeded in blocking transmission of the documents for nine long years... It is rightly said, `when morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.'

``In my view, taking into consideration the nature and gravity of the offence revealed through the circumstances noticed above and the conduct of the petitioners, who are foreign nationals, imposition of condition, directing them not to leave the country without permission of the court, is fully justified and in accordance with law. The fact that the accused persons are foreign nationals by itself can be a ground to decline bail in the given circumstances,'' the Judge said.

On the plea of the petitioners' counsel that their clients had vast financial interests in India and they were running several philanthropic, educational, medical and charitable institutions, the Judge said they were not relevant to the issues involved in the case.

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