Supreme Court allows Karti Chidambaram to travel abroad with conditions & Rs 2 cr deposit

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed Congress MP Karti Chidambaram, who is facing criminal cases that are being probed by investigating agencies, to travel abroad. A bench, headed by Justice Ashok Bhushan, asked Chidambaram to deposit Rs 2 crore with the registry and submit details on the places to be visited and the place where he would stay. The permission is for a period of 6 months.

'He is not going to run away': Kapil Sibal

Opposing the application, Additional Solicitor General S V Raju said earlier Chidambaram was allowed to travel abroad, but with a deposit of Rs 10 crore. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who was appearing for Chidambaram, said the condition was not justified for a member of Parliament and "he would not run away anywhere."

The apex court said the amount be deposited in a nationalised bank. Earlier, it had allowed him to travel to the UK, the US, France, Germany and Spain.

Karti Chidambaram, son of senior Advocate and former Union Minister, P Chidambaram is facing several cases related to the Aircel-Maxis deal and the Foreign Investment Promotion Board clearance to the INX Media for allegedly receiving foreign funds of Rs 305 crore when his father was the Union Finance Minister. The cases are being probed by the ED and the CBI.

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The ED had earlier claimed that Karti Chidambaram had been trying to protract the investigation by "blatantly misusing" the liberty granted by the court in allowing him to travel abroad, PTI reported. 

Earlier this month, a Delhi court had permitted the CBI to investigate documents it has recently received from Swiss authorities in the INX Media case. Special CBI Judge MK Nagpal while permitting CBI to retain the said evidence or documents for the purposes of further investigation, also permitted the investigating agency to prepare a working copy of the data stored in the data carrier in encrypted form, as contained in the said packet, so that it can be used for day-to-day further investigation of the case.

In August 2019, the CBI had arrested P Chidambaram. Subsequently it had filed a chargesheet against Chidambaram and 13 others. P Chidambaram was granted bail in December that year.

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(With agency inputs)