Court issues summons to Ambanis

A Delhi Court on Wednesday issued summons to Reliance group chairman Mukesh Ambani and its managing director Anil Ambani and asked them to appear before it on May 26 in connection with a case pertaining to alleged procurement of classified government documents by the company officials in violation of Official Secrets Act.

Chief metropolitan magistrate Sangeeta Dhingra Sehgal issued the summons asking the two Ambanis to appear in her court on May 26.

On Tuesday , additional sessions judge P K Bhasin had directed the CMM to issue summons to Mukesh and Anil, the then managing directors of Reliance Industries Ltd, for being, "statutorily deemed to be guilty" of the offence alleged to have been committed by officials of the company.

CBI had claimed to have recovered photocopies of four classified secret documents of different ministries of the Government from Reliance's office at Meridien Commercial towers here during a raid conducted on October 28, 1998 in connection with a case registered against gangster Romesh Sharma and others for the offences of extortion and abduction.

CBI had named V Balasubramaniam (president of Reliance), A N Sethuraman (vice president Reliance Industries) and Shankar Adawal (general manager, Reliance Telecom) as accused and charged them with entering into a criminal conspiracy for receiving, possessing and handling classified documents.