SEBI-Sahara refund case: Subrata Roy’s interim parole expires, Supreme Court to hear case today

New Delhi: The Supreme Court will hear the SEBI-Sahara refund case Monday. The apex court had decided to hear the Sahara refund case on February 6 after Subrata Roy’s lawyer Kapil Sibal urged that this matter be advanced. Roy’s interim parole will expire Monday.

In a major relief to Roy, the court on November 28, 2016 extended his interim bail and ordered him to pay Rs 600 crore to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) by February 6. During the hearing, Sibal proposed to the three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Tirath Singh Thakur, that Roy pay Rs 11,000 crore within a period of two-and-a-half years.

His parole was earlier extended till November 28 taking note of the deposit of Rs 200 crores made by him with SEBI in October, as a condition precedent for his release. The apex court had then granted four weeks’ custody parole to Roy to perform his mother’s last rites.

Roy was in Tihar jail since March 4, 2014, till his mother’s death in May 6, 2016, for not complying with the apex court’s orders in connection with a long dispute with the market regulator.

SEBI had alleged that Roy failed to comply with the 2012 SC order directing him to return investors more than Rs 20,000 crore with 15 percent interest that his two companies Sahara India Real Estate Corp Ltd and the Sahara Housing Finance Corp Ltd had raised through optionally fully convertible debentures (OFCD) in 2007 and 2008.

Sahara, once among India’s high-profile firms, has in the past made several failed attempts to raise the bail money using its prized overseas hotels that include the Plaza in New York and Grosvenor House in London. Sahara says it has paid more than 80 percent of the dues to share-holders, but SEBI has disputed that and said the company has not paid more than Rs 10,000 crores.