The Telangana High Court, on Thursday, directed Margadarsi Financiers to provide details of payments made to investors in a pen drive to Undavalli Arun Kumar, who moved the Supreme Court earlier to seek data on investors.
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A Bench of Justices Sujoy Paul and Namavarapu Rajeswhar Rao passed this order after hearing contentions of the counsels of Margadarsi Financiers and Arun Kumar. The petitioners (Margadarsi Financiers and others) shall provide the pen drive to Arun Kumar by December 15, the Bench said.
HC made it clear that Mr. Arun Kumar should not use this data for any other purpose, but only in this matter without court’s permission. The Bench directed the Registry to prepare identical paper books for the Court and for all parties, including Mr. Arun Kumar, containing similar pagination.
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The expenses for preparation of paper books should be borne by the petitioners, the Bench said, and granted four weeks’ time to the RBI to respond to certain new documents filed by the petitioners after it had filed a counter affidavit in the matter. The Government Pleader for Andhra Pradesh and Public Prosecutor for Telangana were granted four weeks of time to file counter affidavit.
In a special leave petition (criminal) filed by Mr. Arun Kumar, the Supreme Court directed Margadarsi Financiers and others to provide all details related to payment of amounts to the investors. In compliance, they filed physical copies running more than 56,000 pages. These were given to Mr. Arun Kumar, who requested the apex court to direct the other party to provide the details in the form of a soft copy through a pen drive to assist the court and analyse the details with the help of technology.
The counsel for Margadarsi Financiers raised objections over this stating that as per Section 2 (o) of the Information Technology Act 2000, the said documents come under the definition of ‘data’ and such details cannot be provided. He also contended that Mr. Arun Kumar was not a victim in the matter and had limited right to ‘assist’ the court.
The Bench, however, observed that the documents sought by Mr. Arun Kumar were already presented before the Supreme Court. “...this is not a case of disclosure of new material or data at all. Thus, the question of providing new data does not arise,” it noted.