New bench to hear Sahara case on May 19

A new bench has been constituted in the Supreme Court to hear the Sahara case which will take up the matter on May 19.

The new bench comprising justices T S Thakur and A K Sikri was set up after J S Khehar recused himself from hearing the matter.

The entire case was earlier being heard by a bench of Justice K S Radhakrishnan and Justice Khehar since 2012. But the Chief Justice of India R M Lodha constituted a new bench after Justice Radhakrishnan retired on May 14 and Justice Khehar recused from the case.

At a farewell ceremony for him, Radhakrishnan had said he and family members were under "unimaginable pressure and tension" while hearing the case.

Justices Radhakrishnan and Khehar in its May 6 judgement had upheld its order jailing Sahara chief Subrata Roy and rejected his claim that rules of natural justice were not followed in the case.

The 65-year-old Roy, who has been in jail since March 4 for non-refund of over Rs 20,000 crore to depositors, was asked by the court to make a fresh proposal for paying Rs 10,000 crore to get bail.

The court had passed the order on a petition filed by Roy challenging constitutional validity of its order passed on March 4 by which he was sent to jail for not complying with its order to deposit around Rs 20,000 crore of investors money with SEBI.

The bench in a strongly-worded judgement had come down heavily on the Group for "systematically" frustrating and flouting all its orders with impunity on refunding investors' money.

It had said the Group "adopted a demeanour of defiance constituting a rebellious behaviour, not amenable to the rule of law" and justified its decision to send Roy along with two promoters of two Sahara companies to jail.