Bombay: The Bombay High Court on Friday rejected the CBI’s plea to probe Reliance Industries Limited and its chairman and CEO Mukesh Ambani for alleged illegal extraction of natural gas from ONGC’s Krishna-Godavari basin fields.
Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Suman Shyam refused to help petitioner Jitendra Maru, who sought registration of an FIR for the offenses of theft, dishonesty, embezzlement and breach of trust.
A copy of the order was not yet available.
According to Maru, between 2004 and 2013, RIL allegedly engaged in a “massive organized fraud” by drilling sideways from its contracted deep wells into adjacent Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) wells, thereby illegally extracting natural gas.
The petition claimed that ONGC discovered this alleged unauthorized mining in 2013 and reported it to the Indian government.
In his plea, Maru relied on an independent inquiry led by consultants DeGolyer and MacNaughton, as well as a report submitted by the former Justice AP Shah committee, which concluded that RIL had exploited ONGC’s reserves.
