A team of CBI officials from Delhi came at around 6.30am and had to spend some time before the security personnel manning the entrance allowed the team inside. At the time of writing the report, they were still inside.
First sign of support for the Maran's came from Karunanidhi when his elder son MK Tamilarasu came to the Board Club avenue residence, but was not allowed inside.
The DMK on its part has refrained from making any comment other than "Marans are quite capable of taking care of themselves".
Karunanidhi is on election tour to Tiruchirapalli, 650 km from Chennai, to canvass for his former cabinet colleague KN Nehru, who is in jail on land grab charges.
The CBI also raided Maran's brother Kalanidhi, offices of Sun TV, and the residence of Sunita Reddy, daughter of Pratap C Reddy founder of Apollo Hospitals, Ralph Marshall, Astra TV CEO, a company that invested in Sun TV and businessman T Ananda Krishnan, owner of Maxis, followed a formal FIR against the former minister.
Dayanidhi is accused of conspiracy, abuse of power and bribery as per the FIR. The CBI has also been investigating the private telephone exchange that functioned at his residence – wheren 300 telephone connections had linked his residence with Sun TV offices when he was the telecom minister.
Dayanidhi Maran was being investigated on a complaint by industrialist C Sivasankaran that he was forced to exit mobile telephony company Aircel by the former minister and sell to Maxis Group of Malaysia.
He alleged that Aircel was deprived of telecom license till it was sold out to Maxis group headed by T Ananda Krishnan.
According to the complaint, Maran had stalled the application for 2G license from Aircel when it was owned by Sivasankaran and cleared the application after the company changed hands when Sivasankaran sold out his stake to Maxis headed by Dayanidhi's friend.
A huge investment of Rs 600 crore flew into Sun TV network owned by Kalanidhi Maran, elder brother of the former union minister and is believed to be the kickback in lieu of the license.
"CBI has registered case against Maran brothers, Ralph Marshall and T Anandkrishnan and three companies under section 120b of IPC read with 13(2) with 13 (1)(d) and also section 7 and 12 of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Case was registered on October 9. Searches were conducted at Delhi and Chennai," CBI spokesperson Dharini Mishra said.
Former Aircel chief C Sivasankaran alleged that Maran as the then telecom minister favoured Maxis-group in the takeover of his company and in return investments were made by the company through Astro network in Sun TV owned by Maran family.
The CBI, in its recent status report to the Supreme Court, had said that during Maran's tenure there was "deliberate delay" to provide letter of intent to Sivasankaran.
The agency had said that after Aircel was sold to Maxis investments were made by the Malaysian firm into the family business of Marans.
Former aides of Maran had reportedly told CBI that the processing of the files of Sivasankaran was delayed allegedly at the direction of the minister, agency sources claimed.
Maran had refuted the allegations.
It was also contended that Marshall held meetings with the telecom minister between 2005 and 2006.
Sivasankaran had alleged that his applications for licences were rejected when Maran was telecom minister in 2006, forcing him to sell his company to Maxis, whose owner is considered to be close to Maran and his brother Kalanidhi, who owns Sun TV.
Later, Maran is alleged to have granted 14 licences to Dishnet Wireless (Aircel) during his tenure as the telecom minister. The allegations have been refuted by Maran.
CBI is looking into financial transactions of Sun TV and Maxis. Besides, it is also looking into various aspects of takeover of Aircel by Maxis group, the sources said.
The probe agency has already registered a preliminary enquiry on issues in 2G spectrum allocation between 2001-07 and is actively looking into matter.
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