Sahara floats new proposal

Sahara group today told Supreme court it is willing to pay Rs 2,500 crore within four days and another Rs 2,500 crore in cash within 60 days for release of its chief Subrata Roy and two directors.

Appearing before a bench of justices K S Radhakrishnan and J S Khehar, senior counsel Ram Jethmalani and Rajiv Dhavan submitted that the comapny would make an upfront payment of Rs 2,500 crore within four working days and a further payment of Rs 2,500 crore within 60 days of the release of its group Chairman and other detenues.

They also sought a further time of 90 days to furnish a bank guarantee of Rs 5,000 crore or to make the cash payment in lieu thereof as ordered by the apex court for getting bail of Roy and two directors, Ravi Shankar Dubey and Ashok Roy Choudhary.

The apex court had earlier imposed a condition that Roy will be freed on bail only if he pays Rs 10,000 crore out of which Rs 5,000 crore has to be in bank guarantee and rest Rs 5,000 crore in cash.

Roy and the other two directors of the Group have been in judicial custody since March 4 for not abiding by the apex court's order for depositing Rs 20,000 crore of investors money with SEBI.

65-year-old Roy had earlier submitted that the apex court's order for detaining him for not paying Rs 20,000 of investors' money with SEBI was illegal and unconstitutional and sought quashing of the order.

A group of senior advocates headed by Ram Jethmalani, who had appeared for Roy and the company, had told the bench that its approach was "biased" and it should not hear the petition challenging the order.

The counsel had said it was unconstitutional to send a man behind bars for not paying the money and also questioned the order putting a condition of paying Rs 10,000 crore for getting interim bail.

SEBI, however, had opposed the stand taken by Roy's counsel, saying that his petition was not maintainable.