Is SC Finally Going To Fix Subrata Roy’s Stonewalling For Good? Seems So

Is the Supreme Court (SC) finally willing to assert itself with Sahara boss Subrata Roy? On Tuesday (25 July), a three-judge bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra told Roy to pay Rs 1,500 crore by 7 September and also ordered the sale of Sahara’s Aamby Valley property to collect the entire amount due to Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI).

The bench, which received yet more appeals for more time from Sahara’s counsel Kapil Sibal, seemed firm enough to reject this request. “Indulgence cannot be granted to Subrata Roy as indulgence leads to procrastination and it is the murderer of justice,” the Hindustan Times quoted it as saying.

That Roy has repeatedly taken a stab at murdering justice is more a comment on the judiciary’s willingness to give him a long rope than his legal team’s brilliance. It was thus sad to see former attorney general Mukul Rohatgi battling on the side of two of Roy’s companies. This sends a signal that the country’s most important legal officer till recently can, quite quickly, head to the other shore to mint money from those seeking to avoid justice.

It is worth recalling that Roy has managed to stonewall for nearly five years a SC verdict dated 31 August 2012 ordering him to return more than Rs 24,000 crore (a number now swelled by interest dues on unpaid amounts) to SEBI. This was the rough amount raised by two Sahara Group companies illegally by bypassing SEBI. Sahara claims it has repaid most of the money to investors, a claim disproved by the fact that SEBI could not locate the bulk of the investors so repaid. A Mint report noted that barely Rs 85 crore had been repaid to genuine Sahara investors till 31 March 2017, which confirms the suspicion that the bulk of Roy’s investors were fictitious or benami.

This could also explain Roy’s reluctance to pay up and his willingness to spend more than two years in jail. Quite probably, the money raised by his firms illegally may not belong to millions of small investors, but to unknown entities held at arm’s length from his own fund-raising arms.

In this scenario, the only right course for the Supreme Court was to appoint a liquidator to recover the dues and deposit the money with SEBI or the taxman, since the money does not belong to identifiable and legitimate investors.

The bench seems to be moving in this direction, as borne out by its observation that it is not eager to accept small amounts from Roy to let him stay out of jail. It will focus on recovering the money. The bench observed: “We are clear in our mind, we will not send you to jail because you have money to pay.”

Translated, this means the SC is finally going to get the money by auctioning Aamby Valley, which is valued at more than Rs 40,000 crore.

The time for playing games with the court may finally be over. But if the court continues to give Sahara more time, it will be damaging its own credibility.

It needs to think about one simple fact: If the wealthy can successfully stonewall a SC order for five years, what message is being sent about rendering justice to those with less means than Roy?