Sahara’s Roy granted 4-weeks’ parole to perform mother’s last rites

The Supreme Court today granted four weeks' conditional release to Sahara chief Subrata Roy to enable him to perform the last rites of his mother, who passed away at the age of 95. The founder-chief of the Sahara Group has been in jail for over two years over non-repayment of investor money collected through illegal bonds.

Subrata Roy's mother Chhabi Roy, who was critically ill for two years, passed away in Lucknow at around 1:30 am on Friday.

A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice TS Thakur granted parole to Roy on humanitarian grounds, but asked the Delhi Police Commissioner to keep the 67-year-old businessman in police net even in Lucknow.

Roy has been in jail since 4 March 2014 for his companies' failure to return about Rs25,000 crore collected from small investors in the form of optionally fully convertible debentures (OFCDs), which were later declared as illegal by stock market regulator SEBI and the Supreme Court.

A sale of Sahara assets by market regulator Securities Exchange of India (Sebi) on the direction of the apex court to refund the investors had also fallen flat as the property titles of the Sahara Group also had legal issues that could hinder their sale.

Sebi, meanwhile, had opposed an earlier plea by Sahara's lawyers to release Roy on bail against collateral of land worth Rs6,109 crore.