The Supreme Court has refused to take on record a report published by Forbes about share dealings of the Gautam Adani group in the Adani-Hindenburg issue.
A Bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud, had reserved their orders on constituting a committee to review the regulatory measures, so as to protect Indian investors, on February 17.
During the hearing today, the lawyer of one of the petitioners Dr. Jaya Thakur, had asked the Bench for taking the Forbes report, saying that it was published subsequently.
The CJI said that this report cannot be taken on record.
The top court of the country is currently hearing three petitions related to the Hindenburg-Adani issue.
The first petition was filed by Congress leader Jaya Thakur seeking investigation against the Adani Group over charges of share inflation by way of manipulations and malpractices, as alleged in a report published by US-based short-seller Hindenburg Research.
It further sought probe into the role of the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) and the State Bank of India (SBI) for allegedly investing huge amount of public money in the FPO of Adani Enterprises at the rate of Rs 3200 per share when the prevailing market rate of the shares was around Rs 1800 per share in the secondary market.
Alleging that industrialist Gautam Adani and his associates had ‘swindled’ lakhs of crores of ‘public money,’ the petitioner sought probe by investigating agencies like CBI, ED, DRI, SEBI, RBI and SFIO under the supervision and monitoring of a sitting judge of the Supreme Court.
A PIL was filed by Vishal Tiwari seeking constitution of a committee under the chairmanship of a retired Supreme Court Judge to investigate the contents of the Hindenburg Research Report.
Another petition filed by Advocate M.L. Sharma sought to declare ‘short-selling’ as an offence of fraud. This plea urged the Apex Court to direct probe against Nathan Anderson, founder of Hindenburg, for ‘exploiting’ innocent investors via short selling under the ‘garb’ of artificial crashing.