Following the number of raids and summons on Karti Chidambaram, P. Chidambaram moved the Supreme Court to demand the right to privacy and the right to live in dignity. The CBI and ED have been investigating the case on the irregular FIPB approvals of Aircel-Maxis and INX Media in 2007 as the country’s finance minister.
Chidambaram filed the 100-page petition on 21st February. Chidambaram compared the investigations by the ED and CBI to a ‘witch hunt’. He believes that the BJP-led government is trying to target him and his son. He claimed harassment, the leaking of false information to the media by the government bodies. The ex-finance minister also pointed out that neither he nor his son were mentioned in the FIR filed by the CBI with regard to the case. Chidambaram also questioned the legality of the investigations being carried out.
But despite all the protest the SC has not stayed a summons order issued against Karti Chidambaram. He has been called by the ED to appear on the first of March. The bench comprising Dipak Misra, Amitava Roy and D.Y. Chandrachud said it would hear the matter on March 6th after advocate Kapil Sibal appearing for Karti Chidambaram asked for time to file a proper application to challenge the ED.
Sibal insisted that Karti Chidambaram was not a ‘common criminal’. Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said appearing for the CBI Karti is not, in fact, a common criminal but he also asked whether a common criminal would be allowed to move a proper application against the ED. He called it, “the sheer abuse of the process of law.” The argument made by Sibal was that he was being called month after month and being made to sit for hours. Karti Chidambaram complained that the summon was unnecessary, that he was not running away. When Sibal asked whether the plan was to arrest Chidambaram’s son, Mehta said that it was not and all this is just to prevent the ED from moving forward on the matter. Whether this is actually a matter of privacy and vendetta or it is about evading legal processes only time will tell.