Aircel-Maxis case: Supreme Court extends deadline by three months given to ED for completing probe

The Supreme Court on Thursday extended by three months the deadline given to the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to complete the probe in the Aircel-Maxis deal case.A bench of Justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan said the probe should be completed in three months.Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the ED, said the agency needs some two-three months to complete the probe as it needs to confront some accused with several e-mails.The apex court had in March given the ED a six-month deadline to complete the probe in the case.The ED is probing a money-laundering case in the Aircel-Maxis matter arising out of 2G spectrum cases.On Tuesday, the Supreme Court allowed senior Congress leader P Chidambaram's son Karti, who is facing proceedings in Aircel-Maxis case, to travel to the UK from 20-30 September.Despite ED's objection that Karti has been "blatantly misusing" the liberty granted to him by the court, a bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and justices AM Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud allowed his plea.[caption id="attachment_5184721" align="alignleft" width="380"]

Representational image. PTI[/caption]The ED on Monday told the apex court that Karti was using the liberty granted by the court to protract the investigation in the cases against him. Karti has been facing criminal cases being investigated by the ED and the CBI.The ED had said the liberty granted to him by the apex court is "blatantly and brazenly hampering, subverting, jeopardising and protracting" the investigation pending against him in the Aircel Maxis Case, which the agency has to complete in six months.The agency in its reply also said: "The petitioner (Karti) during this period of 6 months has remained unavailable for investigation for a total number of 51 days due to his foreign visits."With inputs from PTI