Karti Chidambaram to be given 3 days' notice before arrest

NEW DELHI: A special CBI court here on Friday told the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that Congress MP Karti Chidambaram needs to be given written notice three days's prior if the probe agency needs to arrest him in connection with the Chinese visa case.

The observation was made by the Special CBI Judge M.K. Nagpal, while hearing the anticipatory bail application filed by Karti Chidambaram.

During the course of the hearing, CBI said that the application is not maintainable at this stage and suggested 48 hours of notice in advance on which the court said: "At least three working days time may be given to the applicant for having recourse to legal remedies in case CBI intends to arrest him."

According to the FIR, a Mansa (Punjab) based private firm, Talwandi Sabo Power Limited, took help of a middleman and allegedly paid Rs 50 lakh to get the visa issued for Chinese nationals which would help it in completing a project before the deadline.

For the purpose, the representative of the private company approached a person based in Chennai through his close associate and thereafter, they devised a back-door way to defeat the purpose of ceiling (maximum of Project VISAs permissible to the company's plant) by granting permission to re-use 263 Project VISAs allotted to the Chinese company's officials, as per the CBI.

S. Bhaskararaman, the charted accountant of Karti Chidambram, was arrested by the CBI on Wednesday from Chennai in connection with a case lodged against him and others for allegedly helping Chinese nationals get visas by flouting the rules.

On Wednesday, he was presented at a court in Chennai which sent him to one-day transit remand.

On Tuesday, the federal probe agency had conducted raids at 10 locations across the nation, including the house of former Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, father of Karti Chidambaram.

Later that day, Chidambaram had criticised the CBI's move saying he was not named in the FIR.