The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought a report from the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money on whether its order to prosecute black money account holders by March 31 had been complied with.
Fixing May 12 as the deadline for submission of the report, the bench of Chief Justice Hl Dattu, Justices Madan B lokur and AK Sikri expressed some urgency to deal with the case after an allegation was made by noted jurist Ram Jethmalani — the petitioner in this case — that as per information gathered from foreign sources, the Government was bent upon defeating orders passed by the Court.
The bench asked Jethmalani to reserve his submissions for May 12 when the Court will be in a position to examine the report and come to a definite conclusion. His lawyer senior advocate Anil Divan asked the Court to consider sharing a copy of the report with the petitioner.
Meanwhile, senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy also sought permission from Court to assist in the matter. He claimed to have valuable inputs in the case. The bench, without passing a formal order to add him as a party, agreed to hear his submissions on the next date.
Earlier, the apex court had allowed the petitioner to supply all inputs with regard to unearthing of black money to the SIT headed by former Supreme Court judges MB Shah and Arijit Pasayat. Jethmalani said that following his interaction with German officials it has come to light that the Central Government had not taken any steps to procure names of Indians having black money accounts in foreign tax havens.