The Delhi High Court stayed a CIC order imposing Rs 5000 fine on the CBI for failing to give reasons for not naming Ambani brothers in a case related to alleged masking of international calls as local ones by erstwhile Reliance Infocomm. Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw suspended the Central Information Commission's (CIC) July 25 order which had imposed the fine on CBI's Public Information Officer (PIO) also for failing to appear personally before the CIC to explain the non-compliance with its order. While staying the CIC order on a plea by the CBI,Justice Endlaw also issued notice to information seeker P C Srivastava,seeking his response on the agency's petition by January 25,2012. "PIO has neither responded to the summons issued by the Commission nor provided any written explanation for not furnishing the information to the complainant in accordance with its order dated May 26,2011," the CIC had said while imposing the penalty on the CBI PIO. The CIC also pointed out that the CBI neither gave the requisite information by June 20,2011,deadline not secured stay on its order by the high court. The high court,earlier,on another plea by the CBI had stayed the part of the CIC order,which asked the probe agency to disclose to Srivastava its reasons for not naming Ambani brothers in the international call masking case,despite having named several top officials of Reliance Infocomm. The CBI had taken up the probe into the case in 2006,a year after Reliance industry was divided between the feuding siblings - Mukesh and Anil. Reliance Infocomm went to Anil was rechristened as Reliance Communications. The court had stayed the CIC order on July 13,while deciding to hear CBI plea on January 25,2012. The agency had refused to disclose information to the RTI applicant,saying doing so would affect its prosecution in the case. "Disclosing such information would provide clues to other accused in the case by which they would be able to argue why they too should not be charged," the CBI had said. "Section 8(1)(h) of the RTI Act exempts disclosure of information which would impede the process of investigation or apprehension or prosecution of offenders". Last year,the CBI had filed a charge sheet against the Reliance Infocomm officials Manoj Modi,Akhil Gupta,Shankar Adawal,Pankaj Powar,K R Raju and Bhagwan Das Khurana in the case relating to masking of international calls. Srivastava had sought to know from the CBI the reasons for not making Ambani brothers as accused in the case relating to the alleged manipulation and tampering of calling lines,identification of ISD calls by Reliance Infocomm Ltd and thereby passing off international calls as local ones and thus causing loss to the government and its PSUs,BSNL and MTNL,worth several crores of rupees.
