Court sends Sahara chief back to jail

An angry Supreme Court on Friday ordered Sahara chief Subrata Roy back in jail for taking it for a ride after market regulator SEBI said the properties given to it by Sahara were already attached by the Income Tax Department.

Roy, who was on parole after spending two years in Tihar Jail here in a long running battle with SEBI, had sought extension of the parole ending on Friday, but the Bench, headed by Chief Justice T S Thakur, cancelled his parole as also that of two other directors and directed to take them into custody.

When the Sahara chief''s lawyer got up to seek further parole, the Chief Justice shouted back: "You (Mr Roy) are going back to jail."

The Bench felt Roy was trying to be over smart and ordered that he will be in jail till October 3 when the matter will be again taken up for hearing.

The Bench cancelled the "interim arrangements" of granting him paroles after paroles since May on being told by the SEBI''s lawyer that the market regulator can''t do anything with the properties surrendered by Sahara since they are already attached by the Income Tax Department. Roy and his two directors were let off on parole in May on his plea to attend the last rites of his mother and since then they have been allowed more and more parole to raise funds for paying off the investors. The last parole was granted on September 16 on the condition that the Sahara Group deposit Rs 300 crore with the apex court. On his contention in that hearing that he has already paid off Rs 18,000 crore to the investors, the Supreme Court wanted him to reveal the source of such a large amount since he could not raise even Rs 500 crore earlier to get out of jail.Though SEBI is after the Sahara Group for cheating thousands of investors, the market gossip is that these investors are mostly fake as the black money of many politicians was deposited in the guise of money coming from so many investors. Interestingly, the group was not even able to provide their addresses.