By IANS,
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Wednesday decided to hear on Sep 8 the bail pleas of former stock broker Ketan Parekh and two others, sentenced to a year in jail each for siphoning off Rs.477 million from a Canara Bank subsidiary in a 1992 scam.
A bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan decided to hear the bail pleas of Parekh and co-convicts B.R. Acharya and M.K. Ashok Kumar, while also admitting their appeals against their conviction by a special Mumbai court, set up to try those involved in the 1992 securities scam cases.
The bench, that included Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice J.M. Panchal, admitted their appeals after their counsel submitted that their clients had duly surrendered before jail authorities, and this made them eligible to move the apex court against their conviction.
The lawyers said the three surrendered Monday and were currently being shifted to various jails in Maharashtra from a Mumbai jail.
As per the apex court rules, a convict cannot approach it to appeal against conviction unless he surrenders before the jail authority to undergo the sentence imposed by the trial court.
The apex court’s decision to hear the bail pleas of Parekh and the two others on Sep 8 implies that they will have to bide time in jails at least till then.
A special Mumbai court, trying the 1992 scam cases, had April 1 this year sentenced Parekh and Hiten Dalal along with nine others to rigorous imprisonment of six months to one year for their alleged role in siphoning off Rs.477 million from Canbank Financial Services Ltd, a unit of Canara Bank.
The court, however, granted them bail till July 31 to appeal against its order.
Parekh on July 16 had approached the apex court to seek extension of his July 31 deadline to surrender to jail authorities and wanted to file his appeal against his conviction in the meantime.
But the apex court asked him to first surrender before filing his appeal against his conviction by the trial court.
Meanwhile, Parekh, in a separate proceeding, informed a bench of Justice Ashok Bhan that he had paid his last instalment of Rs.260 million to the Ahmedabad-headquarteed Madhavpura Mercantile Cooperative Bank (MMCB), from where he had allegedly siphoned off Rs.888 million in 2001.
Parekh’s counsel Kamini Jaiswal told the bench, also comprising Justice S.B. Sinha and Justice V.S. Sirpurkar, that he had met the condition on which he was granted temporary bail.
Accordingly, she pleaded to the court to confirm his bail in the case relating to the Rs.10 billion scam. The bench acceded to the plea.