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Journalism of Courage
A day after they were arrested in connection with a CBI probe into an alleged illegal telephone exchange case against former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran, the three accused — Maran’s then additional private secretary V Gowthaman, chief technical officer of Sun TV S Kannan and Sun TV electrician K S Ravi — were produced in a Chennai court Thursday and remanded in judicial custody till February 4.
Meanwhile, Maran accused the CBI of acting under political compulsion to frame him. “CBI should be a fact-finding mission and not a fixing one… I am being singled out. CBI is fixing me to please an RSS ideologue from Tamil Nadu… CBI action may be politically motivated,” he told reporters in Chennai. A CBI spokesperson termed as “false and baseless” the allegations.
CBI had registered a case on July 23, 2013 against Maran. It was alleged that from June 2004 to June 2007, Maran and officials of BSNL, Chennai entered into a criminal conspiracy and caused huge financial loss to the government exchequer. The employees of BSNL/MTNL were given service connection as per their entitlement and for which they were not required to make any payments, and these facilities were allegedly mis-utilised. While the loss in terms of installation charges of the lines was pegged at Rs 1.2 crore, it does not include the losses caused through non-payment of charges for calls placed through the line, said a CBI source. These telecommunication facilities were treated under service category and no bills were allegedly raised for the same during the period from 2004 to 2007.
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