Adani-Hindenburg row: Supreme Court to hear Cong leader Jaya Thakur's plea on Feb 17

As two more other pending pleas, filed by advocates Manohar Lal Sharma and Vishal Tiwari, are already pending and listed for further hearing to February 17, so the Apex Court today clubbed the petition of Thakur with Sharma and Tiwari for hearing the pleas on the same day.

Advocate for Jaya Thakur, mentioned the matter before the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dr Dhananjaya Yeshwant Chadrachud bench, which said, this court will hear the plea along with the pending ones before it on February 17, Friday.

"The advocate mentioned that the PIL sought a direction to launch an investigation against the Adani group of companies. Please list this on February 17."

"Okay. Tag this with the pending matter in this present particular case," the CJI Bench said.

Congress leader Jaya Thakur moved a petition in the Supreme Court yesterday seeking to set up the investigation against Adani Group of Companies and his associates in the light of disclosure made by Hindenburg Research report.

Jaya Thakur, who holds post of General Secretary, Mahila Congress, Madhya Pradesh, has moved his plea, through advocate Varinder Kumar Sharma, before the Supreme Court against Adani Group.

The plea has sought direction to the Union of India (UOI) and other concerned authorities for conducting investigations against the Respondent No.13 (Adani Group of Companies) in the light of disclosure made by Hindenburg Research report.

The petitioner has urged the Supreme Court seeking to set up the investigation against Respondent No.13 (Adani Group of Companies) and his associates who have swindled lacs of the crores of public money and money of the govt. exchequer, by various investigating agency i.e. CBI, ED, DRI, CBDT, EIB, NCB, SEBI, RBI, SFIO under the supervision and monitoring of the sitting judge of the top Court.

The plea also sought to direct the investigating agencies to investigate the role of Respondent No. 11 (Life Insurance Corporation of India) & 12 (State Bank of India) to invest huge amount of public money in the FPO of the Adani Enterprises @ Rs. 3,200/- per share whereas the prevailing market arte of shares of Adani Enterprises in the secondary market was Rs.1,800/- per share approximately.

The petition said that Hindenburg Research report has put serious question mark upon Respondent company, Secondly, the finding of Hindenburg report indicates that the Adani group of companies has inflated share price of their various companies and by using the inflated price they have obtained loans worth Rs.82,000 crores from various public sectors and private banks.

The plea said the respondent company and their associates have setup various offshore shell company at various tax heaven such as Mauritius, Sypris, UAE, Singapore and Caribbean Islands, for transfer of money through hawala routs and have thus indulged in money laundering as defined under Section 3 of the PMLA Act 2002.

The petition also said that as per the Hindenburg report, the associates of Respondent company have been indulged in and are accused in various cases booked by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence.