The illegal telephone exchange case in which former Telecommunication Minister Dayanidhi Maran and his brother Kalanidhi Maran are listed as accused came alive on Tuesday with all the persons figuring in the chargesheet making an appearance in the special CBI court in Chennai. The Maran brothers accompanied by the five other accused persons in the case presented themselves in the court of CBI Special Judge Jawahar who posted the case to July 28 for framing of charges.
S Kannan, Chief Technical Assistant of the Sun TV network (owned by the Maran Brothers), V Gowthaman, the then Additional Private Secretary to Dayanidhi Maran, KS Ravi, technician in Sun TV, K P Brhamadatta, and NP Velusamy (former BSNl employees) are the other accused in the case. All the accused were served copies of the charge sheet. The framing of charges will be taken up when the court hears the case on July 28.
According to the charge sheet filed by the CBI on December 9, 2016, Dayanidhi Maran, who was the Union IT and Telecommunication Minister in the first UPA Government headed by Manmohan Singh, during his tenure from 2004 to 2007 misused his official powers and got an illegal BSNl telephone exchange installed at his Chennai residence. The exchange with 764 high speed data lines was exclusively used for transferring audio and video data for the Sun TV network owned by the Maran Brothers and this caused a loss of Rs 1.78 crore to the exchequer.
It was S Gurumurthy, a leading chartered accountant and columnist with the New Indian Express who broke the news about the illegal telephone exchange functioning from the residence of Dayanidhi Maran. Though the then Minister denied the report and threatened Gurumurthy and the news paper that he would sue them for defamation worth crores, the former became silent when Gurumurthy came out with details like the telephone numbers and the period during the functioning of the exchange.