Mumbai, Nov 03: Rejecting Karnataka government's plea to extend by six weeks the deadline to submit 56 tapes of 1300 telephonic talks between prime accused in the multi-crore fake stamp paper scam Abdul Karim Telgi and others, the Mumbai High Court today directed the state to submit on November 10 these tapes or transcript of such conversations.

Hearing a bunch of PILs filed by social activist Anna Hazare, the bench headed by Chief Justice C K Thakker also rejected the plea of Karnataka government to submit only those tapes which were relevant to the case.
The matter has been deferred to November 12 when the court-appointed DG of Police S S Puri would submit a report on alleged role of Mumbai Police Commissioner R S Sharma and other top officials in the scam.
Advocate General of Maharashtra Goolam Vahanvati assured the court that at this stage these tapes would not be used in any criminal case and their use would be restricted to find out the complicity of police officers in the scam.
Karnataka government submitted that they had intercepted telephonic talks between Telgi and others which runs into at least 100 hours of recorded time. Transcribing these talks was time consuming because conversations were in Kannada, Marathi, Hindi, English and Urdu languages. Besides, the accused also used coded signs and language, its counsel said.
It pleaded that only relevant tapes should be called for but the court disagreed saying all the tapes should be given.
Hazare's lawyer Majeed Memon said it had come to his knowledge that people in high places such as ministers, MLAs, police officers and IAS officers were involved in these talks.
Bureau Report