The Supreme Court Wednesday gave a month's time to Manu Sharma to respond to the contempt notice for throwing ink on Sahara Group chief Subrata Roy March 4 when he was brought to the court by police for a personal appearance.

 

Granting one month time to reply to contempt notice on Sharma had requested for it, a bench of Justice K.S.Radhakrishnan and Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar said that such incidents of attacks were taking place all over the country.

 

"This is happening all over the country when a person is called to the court," observed Justice Radhakrishnan. At the outset of the hearing, Additional Solicitor General K.V. Vishwanathan told the court that such attacks were an obstruction to the administration of justice.

 

"To prevent a person from coming to the court, after he was called by the court itself affects the administration of justice," he said, adding that "such a person (called by the court to appear) is under its (court's) protection". Sharma had thrown ink on Roy on March 4 when he was brought to the court by poliice following the court's order.

 

Meanwhile senior counsel Rajiv Dhawan asked the court to pronounce its order on Roy's offer to deposit Rs. 10,000 crore – Rs.5,000 crore in cash in two installments of Rs.3,000 crores and Rs. 2,000 crore and the bank guarantee of the balance amount of Rs.5,000 crore.

 

Dhawan urged the court that with increasing temperature, things were becoming difficult for Roy in the Tihar jail. He is also not keeping well, the court was told. Roy was sent to judicial custody March 4 for not complying with court's order to return investors Rs.19,000 crores from the total of Rs. 24,000 crores that his group's two companies SIRECL and SHICL had collected from the investors through OFCDs.

 

The apex court had August 2011 had asked the Sahara to return the investors money. Sahara has already deposited with market regulator SEBI Rs.5,120 crore in December 2011.