Mumbai: Mumbai High Court today (November 3) directed Karnataka Government to submit by November 10 transcripts of 56 telephonic talks between prime accused in multi-crore fake stamp paper scam Abdul Karim Telgi and others or in lieu thereof produce audio tapes of such recorded conversations.

The direction was given by a Bench headed by Chief Justice C K Thakker on a bunch of public interest litigations (PILs) filed by social activist Anna Hazare and others.

The matter has been deferred to November 12 when the court-appointed Director General of Police S S Puri would submit report on the alleged role of Mumbai Police Commissioner R S Sharma and other top officials in the scam.

Karnataka Government submitted that they had intercepted 56 telephonic talks between Telgi and others, which run into at least 100 hours of recorded time. Transcribing these talks was time-consuming because conversations were in Kannada, Marathi and Urdu languages, its counsel said.

It was pleaded that all the talks were not relevant to the case and hence it would not be proper to place transcript of all the conversations. This may not be in public interest and might also have an adverse impact on the probe, the Karnataka Government's counsel argued.

The Bench, however, disagreed with him saying on last occasion the court had ordered Karnataka Government to produce transcript of all the talks between Telgi and others and so it was not necessary to go into the issue of relevancy of the conversations with the case.

The judges remarked that escapist attitude on the part of Karnataka Government to produce transcript of such talks was creating suspicion in their minds.

PTI