The Madras High Court on Wednesday set aside the special CBI order which discharged the Maran brothers in the BSNL illegal telephone exchange case. The Madras High Court ordered that charges be framed against them within 12 weeks.
Justice G Jayachandran also sent the case back to the special court, according to the Times of India.
Former Union Minister Dayanidhi Maran and his elder brother and Sun TV group head Kalanithi Maran and five others were discharged by a special CBI court in March. The trial court had ordered the discharge of the accused on the basis that there was no prima facie evidence.
Their discharge was challenged by the Central Bureau of Investigation in the Madras HC in June. The petition was admitted, and notices were issued to the Maran brothers and the other accused.
The others accused are BSNL's former Chief General Manager K Brahmanathan, former Deputy General Manager M Velusamy, the former minister's Personal Secretary V Gowthaman, and Sun TV network employees S Kannan and K S Ravi.
When the special court discharged them, the shares of Sun TV rose to as much as 5%, closing upwards of 3% at the end of the trading day.
The CBI had alleged a loss of Rs 1.78 crore to the government due to the installation of an alleged illegal telephone exchange at Dayanidhi Maran's house, which was used for Sun TV operations.
The CBI alleged that Dayanidhi Maran misused his office when he was the Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology and installed a private telephone exchange at his residence in Chennai between 2004 to 2006. They also accused Dayanidhi of installing 764 telephone lines at his residence to facilitate illegal uplink of Sun TV data.