ISD case: show why Ambanis not charged, CIC tells CBI

The Central Information Commission, the apex body under the Right to Information (RTI) act, has directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to make public its reasons for not including the names of top industrialists Mukesh and Anil Ambani in its chargesheet in the 2006 international call (ISD) re-routing case.

In July last year, the CBI has filed a chargesheet against Manoj Modi – a top Reliance Infocomm executive who is said to have set up the company's network - and five other executives in the case, which relates to passing off international calls made on its network as local ones in order to hoodwink the tax authorities, thus depriving the government of legitimate revenue.

Although the CBI began investigating the case in 2006, a year after the Ambani business empire was carved up between the two brothers, the alleged violations happened a year earlier, when Reliance Infocom was controlled by Mukesh Ambani under the unified Reliance Industries Ltd.

Delhi resident P C Srivastava filed an RTI application seeking to know from the CBI the reasons for not naming Anil and Mukesh Ambani as accused in the case. The agency refused to disclose the information, saying doing so would adversely affect its case.

When the matter reached the transparency panel, the CBI told CIC commissioner Shailesh Gandhi that the reasons for not prosecuting the Ambanis were on record.

"However, disclosing such information would provide clues to other persons accused in the said case by which they would be able to argue why they should also not be charged," the CBI officials told the commission.