Supreme Court reinstates lookout notice against Karti Chidambaram
The Bharatiya Janata Party had challenged the Madras High Court’s order suspending the lookout notice against the Congress politician.
The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the Madras Court’s order that suspended a lookout notice against former Union Minister P Chidambaram’s son Karti Chidambaram. The apex court’s order was based on a plea by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Centre that challenged the lower court’s order to stay the lookout notice against the politician.
“We have had very bad experiences of allowing people to go abroad, and they never come back,” Chief Justice of India Jagdish Singh Khehar said. The court also said that Chidambaram must appear before the Central Bureau of Investigation, reported NDTV. It will hear the case again on Friday.
The CBI had on July 18 issued the notice under Section 10B of the Passport Act to prevent Karti Chidambaram from leaving the country. “We did not want to arrest him,” the lawyer representing the investigation agency said on Monday. “We just wanted to prevent him from leaving the country in case we had to interrogate him.”
Karti Chidambaram had moved the Madras High Court on August 4 against the lookout notice, and the court stayed the notice on August 10.
Karti Chidambaram is being investigated in a money laundering case. “I was always responding to the summons issued by the CBI, and there was no absolute cause of action for issuance of the lookout circular,” Karti Chidambaram had said after the Madras High Court stayed the notice.