Dayanidhi Maran faces arrest in illegal telephone exchange case as Madras HC asks him to surrender in 3 days

The Madras High Court on Monday cancelled the anticipatory bail to former Union minister and DMK leader Dayanidhi Maran, and gave him three days time to surrender.

Maran has been named in an alleged illegal telephone exchange case.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had in July filed a petition in the Madras High Court seeking cancellation of the interim anticipatory bail granted to the former Union telecom minister.

In the petition, the CBI had alleged that Maran, the prime accused in the case, was not cooperating with the investigation.

CBI had registered a case naming Maran, the then Chief General Manager (CGM), BSNL, K Bramhanathan and then CGM of Chennai Telephones MP Veluswami for allegedly entering into a criminal conspiracy and causing a huge financial loss to the government exchequer.

It has alleged that more than 300 high-speed telephone lines were provided at Maran's residence and extended to his brother Kalanithi Maran's SUN TV channel to enable its uplinking when he was the Telecom Minister from 2004-07.

Earlier, the Madras High Court had granted bail to three officials of Sun TV, who were arrested by CBI in connection with the case. They were V Gowthaman, former additional private secretary of Maran, Chief Technical Officer S Kannan and electrician L S Ravi.

The CBI alleged that nearly 323 residential lines were in the name of the BSNL General Manager connecting the Boat House residence of Maran with the office of Sun TV through a dedicated underground cable during his tenure as Telecom Minister.

The sources said these lines were not ordinary telephone lines but costly ISDN, capable of carrying huge data thus facilitating faster transmission of TV news and programmes across the globe.

The probe had started in 2011, nearly four years after getting complaints that a 'virtual' telephone exchange was allegedly set-up at the then Telecom Minister's house for facilitating data transfer from Sun TV.

The CBI filed a preliminary inquiry in 2011 and in its report to the Telecom Secretary alleged these lines were for use of large commercial enterprises to meet special needs such as video conferencing or transmission of huge volume of digital data for which heavy fee is charged but Sun TV got it for free.